Flood Stories from Around the World

Introduction

he stories below are flood stories
from the world's folklore. I have included stories here if
(1) they are stories; (2) they are folklore, not historical
accounts or fiction by a known author; and (3) they involve
a flood. In most borderline cases, I included the story
here anyway. For example, one story (Hopi) tells of a flood which was avoided
and never occurred.

My method for collecting these stories is simply to
collect every flood story I find. I have omitted a few
extremely fragmentary accounts, such as sources that say
"These people have a legend of a flood in which most people
were killed" and little or nothing more. The stories are
summarized both to save space and to avoid copyright
infringements, but I have attempted to preserve all the
motifs and all the names that were given in the cited
account. However, where the story gives intricate account
of events before and/or after the flood (such as in the Zhuang story of Bubo vs. the Thunder
God), some of the details peripheral to the flood itself
may have been summarized out of existence. In a few cases,
two or more overlapping and non-contradictory fragments
from the same culture were combined into one summary.
Complete references
are given at the end; consult them for
more details.

Within each continent or region, stories are grouped by
language family. See
Language Grouping for Flood Stories for
elaboration of the language groups which, as best I can
determine, the stories belong to.

I am sure there are many more flood stories which could
be included here. As I find them, I will add them. I
welcome feedback, especially new flood stories, from
others.

Zeus sent a flood to destroy the men of the Bronze Age.
Prometheus advised his son Deucalion to build a chest. All
other men perished except for a few who escaped to high
mountains. The mountains in Thessaly were parted, and all
the world beyond the Isthmus and Peloponnese was
overwhelmed. Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha (daughter of
Epimetheus and Pandora), after floating in the chest for
nine days and nights, landed on Parnassus. When the rains
ceased, he sacrificed to Zeus, the God of Escape. At the
bidding of Zeus, he threw stones over his head; they became
men, and the stones which Pyrrha threw became women. That
is why people are called laoi, from laas, "a
stone." [Apollodorus,
1.7.2]

The first race of people was completely destroyed
because they were exceedingly wicked. The fountains of the
deep opened, the rain fell in torrents, and the rivers and
seas rose to cover the earth, killing all of them.
Deucalion survived due to his prudence and piety and linked
the first and second race of men. Onto a great ark he
loaded his wives and children and all animals. The animals
came to him, and by God's help, remained friendly for the
duration of the flood. The flood waters escaped down a
chasm opened in Hierapolis. [Frazer,
pp. 153-154]

An older version of the story told by Hellanicus has
Deucalion's ark landing on Mount Othrys in Thessaly.
Another account has him landing on a peak, probably Phouka,
in Argolis, later called Nemea. [Gaster, p. 85]

The Megarians told that Megarus, son of Zeus, escaped
Deucalion's flood by swimming to the top of Mount Gerania,
guided by the cries of cranes. [Gaster, p. 85-86]

An earlier flood was reported to have occurred in the
time of Ogyges, founder and king of Thebes. The flood
covered the whole world and was so devastating that the
country remained without kings until the reign of Cecrops.
[Gaster, p. 87]

Nannacus, king of Phrygia, lived before the time of
Deucalion and foresaw that he and all people would perish
in a coming flood. He and the Phrygians lamented bitterly,
hence the old proverb about "weeping like (or for)
Nannacus." After the deluge had destroyed all humanity,
Zeus commanded Prometheus and Athena to fashion mud images,
and Zeus summoned winds to breathe life into them. The
place where they were made is called Iconium after these
images. [Frazer, p. 155]

"Many great deluges have taken place during the nine
thousand years" since Athens and Atlantis were preeminent.
Destruction by fire and other catastrophes was also common.
In these floods, water rose from below, destroying city
dwellers but not mountain people. The floods, especially
the third great flood before Deucalion, washed away most of
Athens' fertile soil. [Plato,
"Timaeus" 22,
"Critias" 111-112]

Dardanus, first king of Arcadia, was driven from his
land by a great flood which submerged the lowlands,
rendering them unfit for cultivation. The people retreated
to the mountains, but they soon decided that the land left
was not enough to support them all. Some stayed with Dimas,
son of Dardanus, as their king; Dardanus led the rest to
the island of Samothrace. [Frazer, p.
163]

The sea rose when the barriers dividing the Black Sea
from the Mediterranean burst, releasing waters from the
Black Sea in a great torrent that washed over part of the
coast of Asia and the lowlands of Samothrace. The survivors
on Samothrace retreated to the mountains and prayed for
deliverance. On being saved, they set up monuments to the
event and built alters on which to continue sacrifices
through the ages. Fishermen still occasionally draw up
parts of stone columns in their nets, signs of cities
drowned in the sea. [Frazer, pp.
167-168]

Jupiter, angered at the evil ways of humanity, resolved
to destroy it. He was about to set the earth to burning,
but considered that that might set heaven itself afire, so
he decided to flood the earth instead. With Neptune's help,
he caused storm and earthquake to flood everything but the
summit of Parnassus, where Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha
came by boat and found refuge. Recognizing their piety,
Jupiter let them live and withdrew the flood. Deucalion and
Pyrrha, at the advice of an oracle, repopulated the world
by throwing "your mother's bones" (stones) behind them;
each stone became a person. [Ovid,
book
1]

Jupiter and Mercury, traveling incognito in Phrygia,
begged for food and shelter, but found all doors closed to
them until they received hospitality from Philemon and
Baucis. The gods revealed their identity, led the couple up
the mountains, and showed them the whole valley flooded,
destroying all homes but the couple's, which was
transformed into a marble temple. Given a wish, the couple
asked to be priest and priestess of the temple, and to die
together. In their extreme old age, they changed into an
oak and lime tree. [Ovid,
book 8]

One of the kings of Alba (named Romulus, Remulus, or
Amulius Silvius), set himself up as a god equal to or
superior to Jupiter. He made machines to mimic thunder and
lightning, and he ordered his soldiers to drown out real
thunder by beating on their shields. For his impiety, he
and his house were destroyed by a thunderbolt in a fierce
storm. The Alban lake rose and drowned his palace. You may
still see the ruins when the lake is clear and calm. [Frazer 1993, p. 149]

Oden, Vili, and Ve fought and slew the great ice giant
Ymir, and icy water from his wounds drowned most of the
Rime Giants. The giant Bergelmir escaped, with his wife and
children, on a boat made from a hollowed tree trunk. From
them rose the race of frost ogres. Ymir's body became the
world we live on. His blood became the oceans. [Sturluson, p. 35]

A louse and a flea were brewing beer in an eggshell. The
louse fell in and burnt herself. This made the flea weep,
which made the door creak, which made the broom sweep,
which made the cart run, which made the ash-heap burn,
which made the tree shake itself, which made the girl break
her water-pitcher, which made the spring begin to flow. And
in the spring's water everything was drowned. [Grimm 30]

Heaven and Earth were great giants, and Heaven lay upon
the Earth so that their children were crowded between them,
and the children and their mother were unhappy in the
darkness. The boldest of the sons led his brothers in
cutting up Heaven into many pieces. From his skull they
made the firmament. His spilling blood caused a great flood
which killed all humans except a single pair, who were
saved in a ship made by a beneficent Titan. The waters
settled in hollows to become the oceans. The son who led in
the mutilation of Heaven was a Titan and became their king,
but the Titans and gods hated each other, and the king
titan was driven from his throne by his son, who was born a
god. That Titan at last went to the land of the departed.
The Titan who built the ship, whom some consider to be the
same as the king Titan, went there also. [Sproul, pp. 172-173]

The lake of Llion burst, flooding all lands. Dwyfan and
Dwyfach escaped in a mastless ship with pairs of every sort
of living creature. They landed in Prydain (Britain) and
repopulated the world. [Gaster, pp.
92-93]

From his heavenly window, the supreme god Pramzimas saw
nothing but war and injustice among mankind. He sent two
giants, Wandu and Wejas (water and wind), to destroy earth.
After twenty days and nights, little was left. Pramzimas
looked to see the progress. He happened to be eating nuts
at the time, and he threw down the shells. One happened to
land on the peak of the tallest mountain, where some people
and animals had sought refuge. Everybody climbed in and
survived the flood floating in the nutshell. God's wrath
abated, he ordered the wind and water to abate. The people
dispersed, except for one elderly couple who stayed where
they landed. To comfort them, God sent the rainbow and
advised them to jump over the bones of the earth nine
times. They did so, and up sprang nine other couples, from
which the nine Lithuanian tribes descended. [Gaster, p. 93]

Men once lived forever and knew no troubles. The earth
brought forth fine fruits, flesh grew on trees, and milk
and wine flowed in many rivers. One day, and old man came
to the country and asked for a night's lodging, which a
couple gave him in their cottage. When he departed the next
day, he said he would return in nine days. He gave his host
a small fish in a vessel and said he would reward the host
if he did not eat the fish but returned it then. The wife
thought the fish must be exceptionally good to eat, but the
husband said he had promised the old man to keep it and
made the woman swear not to eat it. After two days of
thinking about it, though, the wife yielded to temptation
and threw the fish on the hot coals. Immediately, she was
struck dead by lightning, and it began to rain. The rivers
started overflowing the country. On the ninth day, the old
man returned and told his host that all living things would
be drowned, but since he had kept his oath, he would be
saved. The old man told the host to take a wife, gather his
kinfolk, and build a boat on which to save them, animals,
and seeds of trees and herbs. The man did all this. It
rained a year, and the waters covered everything. After a
year, the waters sank, and the people and animals
disembarked. They now had to labor to gain a living, and
sickness and death came also. They multiplied slowly so
that many thousands of years passed before people were
again as numerous as they were before the flood. [Frazer, pp. 177-178]

Iskender-Iulcarni (Alexander the Great), in the course
of his conquests, demanded tribute from Katife, Queen of
Smyrna. She refused insultingly and threatened to drown the
king if he persisted. Enraged at her insolence, the
conqueror determined to punish the queen by drowning her in
a great flood. He employed Moslem and infidel workmen to
make a strait of the Bosphorus, paying the infidel workmen
one-fifth as much as the Moslems got. When the canal was
nearly completed, he reversed the pay arrangements, giving
the Moslems only one-fifth as much as the infidels. The
Moslems quit in disgust and left the infidels to finish the
canal. The Black Sea swept away the last dike and drowned
the workmen. The flood spread over Queen Katife's country
(drowning her) and several cities in Africa. The whole
world would have been engulfed, but Iskender-Iulcarni was
prevailed upon to open the Strait of Gibraltar, letting the
Mediterranean escape into the ocean. Evidence of the flood
can still be seen in the form of drowned cities on the
coast of Africa and ship moorings high above the coast of
the Black Sea. [Gaster, pp.
91-92]

The gods had decided to destroy mankind. The god Enlil
warned the priest-king Ziusudra ("Long of Life") of the
coming flood by speaking to a wall while Ziusudra listened
at the side. He was instructed to build a great ship and
carry beasts and birds upon it. Violent winds came, and a
flood of rain covered the earth for seven days and nights.
Then Ziusudra opened a window in the large boat, allowing
sunlight to enter, and he prostrated himself before the
sun-god Utu. After landing, he sacrificed a sheep and an ox
and bowed before Anu and Enlil. For protecting the animals
and the seed of mankind, he was granted eternal life and
taken to the country of Dilmun, where the sun rises. [Hammerly-Dupuy, p. 56; Heidel, pp. 102-106]

People have become rebellious. Atum said he will destroy
all he made and return the earth to the Primordial Water
which was its original state. Atum will remain, in the form
of a serpent, with Osiris. [Faulkner, plate 30] (Unfortunately the
version of the papyrus with the flood story is damaged and
unclear. See also Budge, p. ccii.)

Three times (every 1200 years), the gods were distressed
by the disturbance from human overpopulation. The gods
dealt with the problem first by plague, then by famine.
Both times, the god Enki advised men to bribe the god
causing the problem. The third time, Enlil advised the gods
to destroy all humans with a flood, but Enki had Atrahasis
build an ark and so escape. Also on the boat were cattle,
wild animals and birds, and Atrahasis' family. When the
storm came, Atrahasis sealed the door with bitumen and cut
the boat's rope. The storm god Adad raged, turning the day
black. After the seven-day flood, the gods regretted their
action. Atrahasis made an offering to them, at which the
gods gathered like flies, and Enki established barren women
and stillbirth to avoid the problem in the future. [Dalley, pp. 23-35]

The gods, led by Enlil, agreed to cleanse the earth of
an overpopulated humanity, but Utnapishtim was warned by
the god Ea in a dream. He and some craftsmen built a large
boat (one acre in area, seven decks) in a week. He then
loaded it with his family, the craftsmen, and "the seed of
all living creatures." The waters of the abyss rose up, and
it stormed for six days. Even the gods were frightened by
the flood's fury. Upon seeing all the people killed, the
gods repented and wept. The waters covered everything but
the top of the mountain Nisur, where the boat landed. Seven
days later, Utnapishtim released a dove, but it returned
finding nowhere else to land. He next returned a sparrow,
which also returned, and then a raven, which did not
return. Thus he knew the waters had receded enough for the
people to emerge. Utnapishtim made a sacrifice to the gods.
He and his wife were given immortality and lived at the end
of the earth. [Sandars, chpt. 5]

Sharur destroyed Asag, demon of sickness and disease, by
flooding his abode. In the process, "The primeval waters of
Kur rose to the surface, and as a result of their violence
no fresh waters could reach the fields and gardens." [Kramer, p. 105]

The god Chronos in a vision warned Xisuthrus, the tenth
king of Babylon, of a flood coming on the fifteenth day of
the month of Daesius. The god ordered him to write a
history and bury it in Sippara, and told him to build and
provision a vessel (5 stadia by 2 stadia) for himself, his
friends and relations, and all kinds of animals. Xisuthrus
asked where he should sail, and Chronos answered, "to the
gods, but first pray for all good things to men." Xisuthrus
built a ship five furlongs by two furlongs and loaded it as
ordered. After the flood had come and abated somewhat, he
sent out some birds, which returned. Later, he tried again,
and the birds returned with mud on their feet. On the third
trial, the birds didn't return. He saw that land had
appeared above the waters, so he parted some seams of his
ship, saw the shore, and drove his ship aground in the
Corcyraean mountains in Armenia. He disembarked with his
wife, daughter, and pilot, and offered sacrifices to the
gods. Those four were translated to live with the gods. The
others at first were grieved when they could not find the
four, but they heard Xisuthrus' voice in the air telling
them to be pious and to seek his writings at Sippara. Part
of the ship remains to this day, and some people make
charms from its bitumen. [Frazer, pp.
108-110; G. Smith, pp. 42-43]

According to accounts attributed to Berosus, the
antediluvians were giants who became impious and depraved,
except one among them that reverenced the gods and was wise
and prudent. His name was Noa, and he dwelt in Syria with
his three sons Sem, Japet, Chem, and their wives Tidea,
Pandora, Noela, and Noegla. From the stars, he foresaw
destruction, and he began building an ark. 78 years after
he began building, the oceans, inland seas, and rivers
burst forth from beneath, attended by many days of violent
rain. The waters overflowed all the mountains, and the
human race was drowned except Noa and his family who
survived on his ship. The ship came to rest at last on the
top of the Gendyae or Mountain. Parts of it still remain,
which men take bitumen from to make charms against evil.
[H. Miller, pp. 291-292]

God, upset at mankind's wickedness, resolved to destroy
it, but Noah was righteous and found favor with Him. God
told Noah to build an ark, 450 x 75 x 45 feet, with three
decks. Noah did so, and took aboard his family (8 people in
all) and pairs of all kinds of animals (7 of the clean
ones). For 40 days and nights, floodwaters came from the
heavens and from the deeps, until the highest mountains
were covered. The waters flooded the earth for 150 days;
then God sent a wind and the waters receded, and the ark
came to rest in Ararat. After 40 days, Noah sent out a
raven, which kept flying until the waters had dried up. He
next sent out a dove, which returned without finding a
perch. A week later he set out the dove again, and it
returned with an olive leaf. The next week, the dove didn't
return. After a year and 10 days from the start of the
flood, everyone and everything emerged from the ark. Noah
sacrificed some clean animals and birds to God, and God,
pleased with this, promised never again to destroy all
living creatures with a flood, giving the rainbow as a sign
of this covenant. Animals became wild and became suitable
food, and Noah and his family were told to repopulate the
earth. Noah planted a vineyard and one day got drunk. His
son Ham saw him lying naked in his tent and told his
brothers Shem and Japheth, who came and covered Noah with
their faces turned. When Noah awoke, he cursed Ham and his
descendants and blessed his other sons. [Genesis
6-9]

Men lived at ease before the flood; a single harvest
provided for forty years, children were born after only a
few days instead of nine months and could walk and talk
immediately, and people could command the sun and moon.
This indolence led men astray, especially to the sins of
wantonness and rapacity. God determined to destroy the
sinners, but in mercy he instructed Noah to warn them of
the threat of a flood and to preach to them to mend their
ways. Noah did this for 120 years. God gave mankind a final
week of grace during which the sun reversed course, but the
wicked men did not repent; they only mocked Noah for
building the ark. Noah learned how to make the ark from a
book, given to Adam by the angel Raziel, which contained
all knowledge. This book was made of sapphires, and Noah
put it in a golden casket and, during the flood, used it to
tell day from night, for the sun and moon did not shine at
that time. The flood was caused by male waters from the sky
meeting the female waters from the ground. God made holes
in the sky for the waters to issue from by removing two
stars from the Pleiades. He later closed the hole by
borrowing two stars from the Bear. That is why the Bear
always runs after the Pleiades. The animals came to the ark
in such numbers that Noah could not take them all; he had
them sit by the door of the ark, and he took in the animals
which lay down at the door. 365 species of reptiles and 32
species of bird were taken. Since seven pairs of each kind
of clean animal were taken, the clean animals outnumbered
the unclean after the flood. One creatures, the reem
was so big it had to be tethered outside the ark and follow
behind. The giant Og, king of Bashan, was also too big and
escaped the flood sitting atop the ark. In addition to
Noah, his wife Naamah, and their sons and sons' wives,
Falsehood and Misfortune also took refuge on the ark.
Falsehood was initially turned away when he presented
himself without a mate, so he induced Misfortune to join
him and returned. When the flood began, the sinners
gathered around it and rushed the door, but the wild beasts
aboard the ark guarded the door and set upon them. Those
which escaped the beasts drowned in the flood. The ark, and
the animals in it, were tossed around on the waters for a
year, but Noah's greatest difficulty was feeding all the
animals, for he had to work day and night to feed both the
diurnal and nocturnal animals. When Noah once tarried in
feeding the lion, the lion gave him a blow which made him
lame for the rest of his life and prevented him from
serving as a priest. On the tenth day of the month of
Tammuz, Noah sent forth a raven, but the raven found a
corpse to devour and did not return. A week later Noah sent
out a dove, and on its third flight it returned with an
olive leaf plucked from the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem,
for the Holy Land had not suffered from the flood. Noah
wept at the devastation when he left the ark, and Shem
offered a thank-offering; Noah could not officiate due to
his encounter with the lion. [Ginzberg,
pp. 319-335; see also Frazer, pp. 143-145]

Aprocryphal scripture tells that Adam directed that his
body, together with gold, incense, and myrrh, should be
taken aboard the Ark and, after the flood, should be laid
in the middle of the earth. God would come from thence and
save mankind. [Platt, p. 66, 80 (2
Adam 8:9-18, 21:7-11)]

A woman "clothed with the sun" gave birth to a man child
who was taken up by God. The woman then lived in the
wilderness, where the Devil-dragon, cast down to earth,
persecuted her. At one time he cast a flood of water from
his mouth trying to wash her away, but the earth helped the
woman and swallowed the flood. [Revelation
12]

Allah sent Noah to warn the people to serve none but
Allah, but most of them would not listen. They challenged
Noah to make good his threats and mocked him when, under
Allah's inspiration, he built a ship. Allah told Noah not
to speak to Him on behalf of wrongdoers; they would be
drowned. In time, water gushed from underground and fell
from the sky. Noah loaded onto his ship pairs of all kinds,
his household, and those few who believed. One of Noah's
sons didn't believe and said he would seek safety in the
mountains. He was among the drowned. The ship sailed amid
great waves. Allah commanded the earth to swallow the water
and the sky to clear, and the ship came to rest on Al-Judi.
Noah complained to Allah for taking his son. Allah
admonished that the son was an evildoer and not of Noah's
household, and Noah prayed for forgiveness. Allah told Noah
to go with blessings on him and on some nations that will
arise from those with him. [Koran
11:25-48]

In early times, the earth was full of malign creatures
fashioned by the evil Ahriman. The angel Tistar (the star
Sirius) descended three times, in the form of man, horse,
and bull respectively, causing ten days and nights of rain
each time. Each rain drop became as big as a bowl, and the
water rose the height of a man over the whole earth. The
first flood drowned the creatures, but the dead noxious
creatures went into holes in the earth. Before returning to
cause the second flood, Tistar, in the form of a white
horse, battled the demon Apaosha, who took the form of a
black horse. Ormuzd blasted the demon with lightning,
making the demon give a cry which can still be heard in
thunderstorms, and Tistar prevailed and caused rivers to
flow. The poison washed from the land by the second flood
made the seas salty. The waters were driven to the ends of
the earth by a great wind and became the sea Vourukasha
("Wide-Gulfed"). [Carnoy, p. 270; Vitaliano, pp. 161-162; H. Miller, p. 288]

Yima, under divine superintendence, reigned over the
world for 900 years. As there was no disease or death, the
population increased so that it was necessary to enlarge
the earth after 300 years; Yima accomplished this with the
help of a gold ring and gold-inlaid dagger he had received
from Ahura Mazda, the Creator. Enlargement of the earth was
necessary again after 600 years. When the population became
too great after 900 years, Ahura Mazda warned Yima that
destruction was coming in the form of winter, frost, and
subsequent melting of the snow. He instructed Yima to build
a vara, a large square enclosure, in which to keep
specimens of small and large cattle, human beings, dogs,
birds, red flaming fires, plants and foodstuffs, two of
every kind. The men and cattle he brought in were to be the
finest on earth. Within the enclosure, men passed the
happiest of lives, with each year seeming like a day. [Frazer, pp. 180-182; Dresden, p. 344]

As a girl was grinding flour, a goat came to lick it.
She first drove it away, but when it came back, she allowed
it to lick as much as it could. In return for the kindness,
the goat told her there will be a flood that day and
advised her and her brother to run elsewhere immediately.
They escaped with a few belongings and looked back to see
water covering their village. After the flood, they lived
on their own for many years, unable to find mates. The goat
reappeared and said they could marry themselves, but they
would have to put a hoe-handle and a clay pot with a broken
bottom on their roof to signify that they are relatives.
[Kahler-Meyer, pp. 251-252]

Tumbainot, a righteous man, had a wife named Naipande
and three sons, Oshomo, Bartimaro, and Barmao. When his
brother Lengerni died, Tumbainot, according to custom,
married the widow Nahaba-logunja, who bore him three more
sons, but they argued about her refusal to give him a drink
of milk in the evening, and she set up her own homestead.
The world was heavily populated in those days, but the
people were sinful and not mindful of God. However, they
refrained from murder, until at last a man named Nambija
hit another named Suage on the head. At this, God resolved
to destroy mankind, except Tumbainot found grace in His
eyes. God commanded Tumbainot to build an ark of wood and
enter it with his two wives, six sons and their wives, and
some of animals of every sort. When they were all aboard
and provisioned, God caused a great long rain which caused
a flood, and all other men and beasts drowned. The ark
drifted for a long time, and provisions began to run low.
The rain finally stopped, and Tumbainot let loose a dove to
ascertain the state of the flood. The dove returned tired,
so Tumbainot knew it had found no place to rest. Several
days later, he loosed a vulture, but first he attached an
arrow to one of its tail feathers so that, if the bird
landed, the arrow would hook on something and be lost. The
vulture returned that evening without the arrow, so
Tumbainot reasoned that it must have landed on carrion, and
that the flood was receding. When the water ran away, the
ark grounded on the steppe, and its occupants disembarked.
Tumbainot saw four rainbows, one in each quarter of the
sky, signifying that God's wrath was over. [Frazer, pp. 330-331]

Ilet, the spirit of lightning, came to live, in human
form, in a cave high on the mountain named Tinderet. When
he did so, it rained incessantly and killed most of the
hunters living in the forest below. Some hunters, searching
for the cause of the rain, found him and wounded him with
poison arrows. Ilet fled and died in a neighboring country.
When he died, the rain stopped. [Kelsen, p. 137]

The ocean was once enclosed in a small pot kept by a man
and his wife under the roof of their hut to fill their
larger pots. The man told his daughter-in-law never to
touch it because it contained their sacred ancestors. But
she grew curious and touched it. It shattered, and the
resulting flood drowned everything. [Kahler-Meyer, pp. 253-254]

The rivers began flooding. God told two men to go into a
ship, taking with them all sorts of seed and animals. The
flood rose, covering the mountains. Later, to check whether
the waters had dried up, the man sent out a dove, and it
came back to the ship. He waited and sent out a hawk, which
did not return because the waters had dried. The men then
disembarked with the animals and seeds. [Gaster, pp. 120-121]

Chameleon heard a strange noise, like water running, in
a tree, but at that time there was no water in the world.
He cut open the trunk, and water came out in a great flood
that spread all over the earth. The first human couple
emerged with the water. [Parrinder, pp. 46-47]

An old woman hoarded water and killed men who sought it.
The hero Mba succeeded in killing the woman. Upon her
death, the water flowed in such quantities that it flooded
everything. Mba was washed away and landed in the top of a
tree. [Kelsen, p. 136]

A beautiful but mysterious woman agreed to marry a man
on the condition that he never ask about her family. He
agreed, and they lived happily together until it was time
for their oldest son's circumcision, and the man asked his
wife why her family couldn't attend the ceremony. With
that, the wife bounced into the air and made a hole seven
miles deep when she landed. She called upon her ancestors,
who came as spirits from Mt. Kenya. The spirits raised a
thunder and hailstorm as they came. They brought food,
goats, cattle, and beer with them and, while the people
took shelter in caves, flooded the countryside with beer,
turning it into a lake. When the spirits left, they took
the couple and their children with them into Mt. Kenya. [Abrahams, pp. 336-338]

An old lady, weary and covered with sores, arrived in a
town called Sonanzenzi and sought hospitality, which was
denied her at all homes but the last she came to. When she
was well and ready to depart, she told her friends to pack
up and leave with her, as the place was accursed and would
be destroyed by Nzambi. The night after they had left,
heavy rains came and turned the valley into a lake,
drowning all the inhabitants of the town. The sticks of the
houses can still be seen deep in the lake. [Feldmann, p. 50; Kelsen, p. 137]

A chieftainess named Moena Monenga sought food and
shelter in a village. She was refused, and when she
reproached the villagers for their selfishness, they said,
in effect, "What can you do about it"? So she began a slow
incantation, and on the last long note, the whole village
sank into the ground, and water flowed into the depression,
forming what is now Lake Dilolo. When the village's
chieftain returned from the hunt and saw what had happened
to his family, he drowned himself in the lake. [Vitaliano, pp. 164-165; Kelsen, p. 136]

The sun once met the moon and threw mud at it, making it
dimmer. There was a flood when this happened. Men put their
milk stick behind them and were turned into monkeys. The
present race of men is a recent creation. [Fauconnet, p. 481; Kelsen, p. 136]

Several animals wooed Ngolle Kakesse, granddaughter of
God, but only Zebra was accepted. But Zebra broke his
promise not to allow her to work. From her stretched-out
legs ran water which flooded the land, and Ngolle herself
drowned. [Kelsen, p. 135]

The old water woman only gave water to him who sucks her
sores. One man did so, and water flowed and drowned almost
everybody. He continued his disgusting task, and the water
stopped flowing. [Kelsen, p. 136]

A god, Ifa, tired of living on earth and went to dwell
in the firmament with Obatala. Without his assistance,
mankind couldn't interpret the desires of the gods, and one
god, Olokun, in a fit of rage, destroyed nearly everybody
in a great flood. [Kelsen, p.
135]

The sun and moon are man and wife, and their best friend
was flood, whom they often visited. They often invited
flood to visit them, but he demurred, saying their house
was too small. Sun and moon built a much larger house, and
flood could no longer refuse their invitation. He arrived
and asked, "Shall I come in?" and was invited in. When
flood was knee-deep in the house, he asked if he should
continue coming and was again invited to do so. The flood
brought many relatives, including fish and sea beasts. Soon
he rose to the ceiling of the house, and the sun and moon
went onto the roof. The flood kept rising, submerging the
house entirely, and the sun and moon made a new home in the
sky. [Eliot, pp. 47-48]

The first people Etim 'Ne (Old Person) and his wife Ejaw
came to earth from the sky. At first, there was no water on
earth, so Etim 'Ne asked the god Obassi Osaw for water, and
he was given a calabash with seven clear stones. When Etim
'Ne put a stone in a small hole in the ground, water welled
out and became a broad lake. Later, seven sons and seven
daughters were born to the couple. After the sons and
daughters married and had children of their own, Etim 'Ne
gave each household a river or lake of its own. He took
away the rivers of three sons who were poor hunters and
didn't share their meat, but he restored them when the sons
begged him to. When the grandchildren had grown and
established new homes, Etim 'Ne sent for all the children
and told them each to take seven stones from the streams of
their parents, and to plant them at intervals to create new
streams. All did so except one son who collected a
basketful and emptied all his stones in one place. Waters
came, covered his farm, and threatened to cover the whole
earth. Everyone ran to Etim 'Ne, fleeing the flood. Etim
'Ne prayed to Obassi, who stopped the flood but let a lake
remain covering the farm of the bad son. Etim 'Ne told the
others the names of the rivers and streams which remained
and told them to remember him as the bringer of water to
the world. Two days later he died. [Courlander, pp. 267-269]

A charitable man gave away everything he had to the
animals. His family deserted him, but when he gave his last
meal to the (unrecognized) god Ouende, Ouende rewarded him
with three handfuls of flour which renewed itself and
produced even greater riches. Then Ouende advised him to
leave the area, and sent six months of rain to destroy his
selfish neighbors. The descendants of the rich man became
the present human race. [Kelsen, pp.
135-136]

After seven years of drought, the Great Woman said to
the Great Man that rains had come elsewhere; how should
they save themselves. The Great Man counseled the other
giants to make boats from cut poplars, anchor them with
ropes of willow roots 500 fathoms long, and provide them
with seven days of food and with pots of melted butter to
grease the ropes. Those who did not make all the
preparations perished when the waters came. After seven
days, the waters sank. But all plants and animals had
perished, even the fish. The survivors, on the brink of
starvation, prayed to the great god Numi-târom, who
recreated living things. [Gaster, pp.
93-94]

Seven people were saved in a boat from a flood. A
terrible draught followed the flood, but the people were
saved by digging a deep hole in which water formed.
However, all but one young man and woman died of hunger.
These two saved themselves by eating the mice which came
out of the ground. The human race is descended from this
couple. [Holmberg, pp. 367-368]

Flood waters rose for seven days. Some people and
animals were saved by climbing on floating logs and
rafters. A strong north wind blew for seven days and
scattered the people, which is why there are now different
peoples speaking different languages. [Holmberg, p. 367]

A flood covered the whole land in the early days of the
world. A few people saved themselves on rafts made from
bound-together tree trunks. They carried their property and
provisions and used stones tied to straps as anchors to
prevent being swept out to sea. They were left stranded on
mountains when the waters receded. [Holmberg, p. 368; Gaster, p. 100]

Tengys (Sea) was once lord over the earth. Nama, a good
man, lived during his rule with three sons, Sozun-uul,
Sar-uul, and Balyks. Ülgen commanded Nama to build an
ark (kerep), but Nama's sight was failing, so he
left the building to his sons. The ark was built on a
mountain, and from it were hung eight 80-fathom cables with
which to gauge water depth. Nama entered the ark with his
family and the various animals and birds which had been
driven there by the rising waters. Seven days later, the
cables gave way from the earth, showing that the flood had
risen 80 fathoms. Seven days later, Nama told his eldest
son to open the window and look around, and the son saw
only the summits of mountains. His father ordered him to
look again later, and he saw only water and sky. At last
the ark stopped in a group of eight mountains. On
successive days, Nama released a raven, a crow, and a rook,
none of which returned. On the fourth day, he sent out a
dove, which returned with a birch twig and told why the
other birds hadn't returned; they had found carcasses of a
deer, dog, and horse respectively, and had stayed to feed
on them. In anger, Nama cursed them to behave thus to the
end of the world. When Nama became very old, his wife
exhorted him to kill all the men and animals he had saved
so that they, transferred to the other world, would be
under his power. Nama didn't know what to do. Sozun-uul,
who didn't dare to oppose his mother openly, told his
father a story about seeing a blue-black cow devouring a
human so only the legs were visible. Nama understood the
fable and cleft his wife in two with his sword. Finally,
Nama went to heaven, taking with him Sozun-uul and changing
him into a constellation of five stars. [Holmberg, pp. 364-365]

The giant frog (or turtle) which supported the earth
moved, which caused the cosmic ocean to begin flooding the
earth. An old man who had guessed something like this would
happen built an iron-reinforced raft, boarded it with his
family, and was saved. When the waters receded, the raft
was left on a high wooded mountain, where, it is said, it
remains today. After the flood, Kezer-Tshingis-Kaira-Khan
created everything around us. Among other things, he taught
people how to make strong liquor. [Holmberg, p. 366]

Hailibu, a kind and generous hunter, saved a white snake
from a crane which attacked it. Next day, he met the same
snake with a retinue of other snakes. The snake told him
that she was the Dragon King's daughter, and the Dragon
King wished to reward him. She advised Hailibu to ask for
the precious stone that the Dragon King keeps in his mouth.
With that stone, she told him, he could understand the
language of animals, but he would turn to stone if he ever
divulged its secret to anyone else. Hailibu went to the
Dragon King, turned down his many other treasures, and was
given the stone. Years later, Hailibu heard some birds
saying that the next day the mountains would erupt and
flood the land. He went back home to warn his neighbors,
but they didn't believe him. To convince them, he told them
how he had learned of the coming flood and told them the
full story of the precious stone. When he finished his
story, he turned to stone. The villagers, seeing this
happen, fled. It rained all the next night, and the
mountains erupted, belching forth a great flood of water.
When the people returned, they found the stone which
Hailibu had turned into and placed it at the top of the
mountain. For generations, they have offered sacrifices to
the stone in honor of Hailibu's sacrifice. [Elder & Wong, pp. 75-77]

The god Burkhan advised a man to build a great ship, and
the man worked on it in the forest for many long days,
keeping his intention secret from his wife by telling her
he was chopping wood. The devil, Shitkur, told the wife
that her husband was building a boat and that it would be
ready soon. He further told her to refuse to board and,
when her husband strikes her in anger, to say, "Why do you
strike me, Shitkur?" Because the woman followed this
advise, the devil was able to accompany her when she
boarded the boat. With the help of Burkhan, the man
gathered specimens of all animals except Argalan-Zan, the
Prince of animals (some say it was a mammoth), which
considered itself too large to drown. The flood destroyed
all animals left on earth, including the Prince of animals,
whose bones can still be found. Once on the boat, the devil
changed himself into a mouse and began gnawing holes in the
hull, until Burkhan created a cat to catch it. [Holmberg, pp. 361-362]

God told Noj to build a ship. The devil tempted his wife
to find out what he was building in the forest. When the
devil found out, he destroyed by night what Noj built by
day, so the boat was not completed when the flood came. God
was forced to send down an iron vessel in which Noj, his
wife and family, and all kinds of animals were saved. [Holmberg, p. 362]

To find out why Noah was building an ark, the devil told
Noah's wife to prepare a strong drink. Noah, drunk from
this drink, told the secret God entrusted him with. The
devil hindered Noah's work, and when the ship was finished,
sneaked into it in the company of the wife, who had tempted
her husband into saying the devil's name. Once in the ark,
he assumed the form of a mouse and gnawed holes in the
bottom of the ark. [Holmberg, p.
363]

Manu, the first human, found a small fish in his
washwater. The fish begged protection from the larger
fishes, in return for which it would save Manu. Manu kept
the fish safe, transferring it to larger and larger
reservoirs as it grew, eventually taking it to the ocean.
The fish warned Manu of a coming deluge and told him to
build a ship. When the flood rose, the fish came, and Manu
tied the craft to its horn. The fish led him to a northern
mountain and told Manu to tie the ship's rope to a tree to
prevent it from drifting. Manu, alone of all creatures,
survived. He made offerings of clarified butter, sour milk,
whey, and curds. From these, a woman arose, calling herself
Manu's daughter. Whatever blessings he invoked through her
were granted him. Through her, he generated this race. [Gaster, pp. 94-95; Kelsen, p. 128; Brinton, pp. 227-228]

The great sage Manu, son of Vivasvat, practiced austere
fervor. He stood on one leg with upraised arm, looking down
unblinkingly, for 10,000 years. While so engaged on the
banks of the Chirini, a fish came to him and asked to be
saved from larger fish. Manu took the fish to a jar and, as
the fish grew, from thence to a large pond, then to the
river Ganga, then to the ocean. Though large, the fish was
pleasant and easy to carry. Upon being released into the
ocean, the fish told Manu that soon all terrestrial objects
would be dissolved in the time of the purification. It told
him to build a strong ship with a cable attached and to
embark with the seven sages (rishis) and certain
seeds, and to then watch for the fish, since the waters
could not be crossed without it. Manu embarked as enjoined
and thought on the fish. The fish, knowing his desire,
came, and Manu fastened the ship's cable to its horn. The
fish dragged the ship through roiling waters for many
years, at last bringing it to the highest peak of Himavat,
which is still known as Naubandhana ("the Binding of the
Ship"). The fish then revealed itself as Parjapati Brahma
and said Manu shall create all living things and all things
moving and fixed. Manu performed a great act of austere
fervor to clear his uncertainty and then began calling
things into existence. [Frazer, pp.
185-187]

The heroic king Manu, son of the Sun, practiced austere
fervor in Malaya and attained transcendent union with the
Deity. After a million years, Brahma bestowed on Manu a
boon and asked him to choose it. Manu asked for the power
to preserve all existing things upon the dissolution of the
universe. Later, while offering oblations in his hermitage,
a carp fell in his hands, which Manu preserved. The fish
grew and cried to Manu to preserve it, and Manu moved it to
progressively larger vessels, eventually moving it to the
river Ganga and then to the ocean. When it filled the
ocean, Manu recognized it as the god Janardana, or Brahma.
It told Manu that the end of the yuga was
approaching, and soon all would be covered with water. He
was to preserve all creatures and plants aboard a ship
which had been prepared. It said that a hundred years of
drought and famine would begin this day, which would be
followed by fires from the sun and from underground that
would consume the earth and the ether, destroying this
world, the gods, and the planets. Seven clouds from the
steam of the fire will inundate the earth, and the three
worlds will be reduced to one ocean. Manu's ship alone will
remain, fastened by a rope to the great fish's horn. Having
announced all this, the great being vanished. The deluge
occurred as stated; Janardana appeared in the form of a
horned fish, and the serpent Ananta came in the form of a
rope. Manu, by contemplation, drew all creatures towards
him and stowed them in the ship and, after making obeisance
to Janardana, attached the ship to the fish's horn with the
serpent-rope. [Frazer, pp.
188-190]

At the end of the past kalpa, the demon Hayagriva
stole the sacred books from Brahma, and the whole human
race became corrupt except the seven Nishis, and especially
Satyavrata, the prince of a maritime region. One day when
he was bathing in a river, he was visited by a fish which
craved protection and which he transferred to successively
larger vessels as it grew. At last Satyavrata recognized it
as the god Vishnu, "The Lord of the Universe." Vishnu told
him that in seven days all the corrupt creatures will be
destroyed by a deluge, but Satyavrata would be saved in a
large vessel. He was told to take aboard the miraculous
vessel all kinds of medicinal herbs, food esculant grains,
the seven Nishis and their wives, and pairs of brute
animals. After seven days, the oceans began to overflow the
coasts and constant rain began flooding the earth. A large
vessel floated in on the rising waters, and Satyavrata and
the Nishis entered with their wives and cargo. During the
deluge, Vishnu preserved the ark by again taking the form
of a giant fish and tying the ark to himself with a huge
sea serpent. When the waters subsided, he slew the demon
who had stolen the holy books and communicated their
contents to Satyavrata. [H. Miller,
pp. 289-290; Howey, pp. 389-390; Frazer, pp. 191-193]

One windy day, the sea flooded the port city of
Dwaravati. All its occupants perished except Krishna, an
avatar of Vishnu, and his brother Balarama, who were
walking in the forests of Raivataka Hill. Krishna left his
brother alone. Sesha, the serpent who supports the world,
withdrew his energy from Balarama; in a jet of light,
Balarama's spirit entered the sea, and his body fell over.
Krishna decided that tomorrow he would destroy the world
for all its evils, and he went to sleep. Jara the hunter
passed by, mistook Krishna's foot for the face of a stag,
and shot it. The wound to Krishna's foot was slight, but
Jara found Krishna dead. He had saffron robes, four arms,
and a jewel on his breast. The waters still rose and soon
lapped at Jara's feet. Jara felt ashamed but helpless; he
left deciding never to speak of the incident. [Buck, pp. 408-409]

Out of gratitude for the dhobi feeding it, a fish
told a dhobi (a pious man) that a great deluge was
coming. The man prepared a large box in which he embarked
with his sister and a cock. After the flood, a messenger of
Rama sent to find the state of affairs discovered the box
by the cock's crowing. Rama had the box brought to him and
questioned the man. Facing north, east, and west, the man
swore that the woman was his sister; facing south, the man
said she was his wife. Told that the fish gave the warning,
Rama had the fish's tongue removed, and fish have been
tongueless since. Rama ordered the man to repopulate the
world, so he married his sister, and they had seven
daughters and seven sons. The firstborn received a horse as
a gift from Rama, but, being unable to ride, he instead
went into the forest to cut wood, and so his descendants
have been woodcutters to this day. [Gaster, pp. 95-96]

A boy and girl were born to the first man and woman. God
sent a deluge to destroy a jackal which had angered him.
The man and woman heard it coming, so they shut their
children in a hollow piece of wood with provisions to last
until the flood subsides. The deluge came, and everything
on earth was drowned. After twelve years, God created two
birds and sent them to see if the jackal had been drowned.
They saw nothing but a floating log and, landing on it,
heard the children inside, who were saying to each other
that they had only three days of provisions left. The birds
told God, who caused the flood to subside, took the
children from the log, and heard their story. In due time
they were married. God gave each of their children the name
of a different caste, and all people are descended from
them. [Gaster, p. 96]

A flood once covered the whole world and drowned
everyone except for one couple, who climbed up a tree on
the highest peak of the Leng hill. In the morning, they
discovered that they had been changed into a tiger and
tigress. Seeing the sad state of the world, Pathian, the
creator, sent a man and a woman from a cave on the hill.
But as they emerged from the cave, they were terrified by
the sight of the tigers. They prayed to the Creator for
strength and killed the beasts. After that, they lived
happily and repopulated the world. [Gaster, p. 97]

Half of the land mass Kumari Kandam, which was south of
India, sank in a great flood, destroying the first Tamil
Sangam (literary academy). The people moved to the other
half and established the second Tamil Sangam there, but the
rest of Kumari too sank beneath the sea. The lone survivor
was a Tamil prince named Thirumaaran, who managed to rescue
some Tamil literary classics and swim with them to
present-day Tamil Nadu. [Sundar Narayan, personal
communication, citing Appadurai; see also Adigal, p. 70 (11:20-21)]

Tibet was almost totally inundated, until the god Gya
took compassion on the survivors, drew off the waters
through Bengal, and sent teachers to civilize the people,
who until then had been little better than monkeys. Those
people repopulated the land. [Gaster,
p. 97]

Mankind was once destroyed because they had neglected
the proper sacrifices as the slaughter of buffaloes and
pigs. Two men, Khun litang and Chu liyang, survived with
their wives and, dwelling on Singrabhum hill, became
humanity's ancestors. [Gaster, p.
97]

The king of the water demons fell in love with the woman
Ngai-ti (Loved One). She rejected him and ran away. He
pursued and surrounded the whole human race with water on
the hill Phun-lu-buk, said to be in the far northeast.
Threatended by waters which continued to rise, the people
threw Ngai-ti into the flood, which then receded. The
receding water carved great valleys; until then, the earth
had been level. [Gaster, p. 97]

After death came into the world as a result of a
macaque's curse, sky and earth longed for human souls and
bones. That is how the flood began. An orphaned brother and
sister lived in squalor in a village. A pair of golden
birds flew down to them one day, warned them that a huge
wave would flood the earth, and told them to take shelter
in a gourd and not to come out until they heard the birds
again. The two children warned their neighbors, but the
people didn't believe them. The children sawed off the top
of a gourd and went inside. For ninety-nine days, there was
no wind or rain, and the earth became parched. Then
torrents of rain fell, and the resulting flood washed
everything away. The brother and sister occasionally could
hear the gourd bump against the bottom of heaven. After
long waiting, they heard the birds calling, left the gourd,
and found they had landed atop a mountain, and the flood
had receded. But now there were nine suns and seven moons
in the sky, and they scorched the earth during the day. The
two golden birds returned with a golden hammer and silver
tongs and instructed the children how to use them to get
the dragon king's bow and arrows. Brother and sister went
to the dragon pond and struck the reef-home of the dragon
king with the hammer. This raised such a racket that the
dragon king sent his servants (various fish) to
investigate. The children grabbed the fish with the tongs
and threw them on the bank. At last, the dragon king
himself came to investigate and had to give his bow and
arrows when he was likewise caught. With these, brother and
sister shot down all but the brightest sun and moon.
Brother and sister then went in search of other people,
exploring north and south respectively. They found nobody
else, and the golden birds appeared again and urged them to
marry. They refused, but the birds told them it was the
will of heaven. After divinations in the form of several
improbable events (tortoise shells landing a certain way, a
broken millstone came together, and the brother shooting an
arrow through a needle's eye--all happening three times),
they consented. They had six sons and six daughters which
traveled different directions and became the ancestors of
different races. [L. Miller, pp.
78-84]

In primeval times, men were wicked. The patriarch
Tse-gu-dzih sent a messenger down to earth, asking for some
flesh and blood from a mortal. Only one man, Du-mu,
complied. In wrath, Tse-gu-dzih locked the rain-gates, and
the waters mounted to the sky. Du-mu was saved in a log
hollowed out of a Pieris tree, together with his
four sons and otters, wild ducks, and lampreys. The
civilized peoples who can write are descended from the
sons; the ignorant races are descendants of wooden figures
whom Du-mu constructed after the deluge. [Gaster, pp. 99-100]

From the time of creation, people's lives were happy and
peaceful, but one year a great flood came. The parents of
Mahei and Maniu, twin brother and sister, felled a big
tree, hollowed it out, and covered both ends with cowhide.
They attached brass bells to the outside, and inside they
put grain and seed, the two children, and a knife and cake
of beeswax. They instructed the children not to come out
until the flood had gone down. The flood came, and the
children floated for an undeterminable period. Mahei got
impatient and cut a small hole with the knife. He saw muddy
waves surging and dead bodies everywhere, and he closed the
hole with wax. Later, Maniu cut a hole and saw nothing but
water; she likewise filled the hole. Finally, they heard
the bells ringing, indicating they had touched ground, and
they left the drum. They were the only survivors. When they
got old, they realized that there would be no people left
if they died. Mahei suggested marriage, but his sister was
ashamed to marry her brother. Mahei suggested she consult
the magic tree. Maniu went there, but Mahei took a shortcut
and hid behind the tree. Disguising his voice, he answered
Maniu that she should marry her brother. They did so, but
by then they were too old to have children. The sole gourd
seed they had carried in the wooden drum had grown
profusely, and although most of the fruits dried and
rotted, one stayed ripe. They had hung it in their shed.
One day, they heard faint voices coming from the gourd.
They heated their fire tongs red hot to burn a hole in the
gourd, but each time they tried, a voice said "Don't burn
me!" Finally, one voice, calling herself Grandma Apierer,
said to burn her or none could get out. They burnt a hole
in the navel on the gourd's bottom. First out was Apo,
ancestor of the Konge people; his skin was darkened by the
soot around the hole. The next out, in order, were Han,
Dai, and last of all Jino (which literally means "last
squeeze"); they became ancestors of their people. Since
then, rice offerings have been made to Apierer, who gave
her life so that the Jino might live. [L.
Miller, pp. 68-73]

Two brothers survived a world-wide deluge on a raft. The
waters rose until they reached to heaven. A mango tree grew
from the celestial vault, and the younger brother climbed
up to eat its fruit. But the flood suddenly subsided,
stranding him there. (The story breaks off here.) [Frazer, p. 208]

When the deluge came, Pawpaw Nan-chaung and his sister
Chang-hko saved themselves in a large boat. They took with
them nine cocks and nine needles. When the storm and rain
had passed, they each day threw out one cock and one needle
to see whether the waters were falling. On the ninth day,
they finally heard the cock crow and the needle strike
bottom. They left their boat, wandered about, and came to a
cave home of two nats or elves. The elves bade them
stay and make themselves useful, which they did. Soon the
sister gave birth, and the old elfin woman minded the baby
while its parents were away at work. The old woman, who was
a witch, disliked the infant's squalling, and one day took
it to a place where nine roads met, cut it to pieces, and
scattered its blood and body about. She carried some of the
tidbits back to the cave, made it into a curry, and tricked
the mother into eating it. When the mother learned this,
she fled to the crossroads and cried to the Great Spirit to
return her child and avenge its death. The Great Spirit
told her he couldn't restore her baby, but he would make
her mother of all nations of men. Then, from each road,
people of different nations sprang up from the fragments of
the murdered babe. [Gaster, pp.
97-98]

The Supreme Sovereign ordered the water god Gong Gong to
create a flood as punishment and warning for human
misbehavior. Gong Gong extended the flood for 22 years, and
people had to live in high mountain caves and in trees,
fighting with wild animals for scarce resources. Unable to
persuade the Supreme Sovereign to stop the flood, and told
by an owl and a turkey about _Xirang_ or Growing Soil, the
supernatural hero Gun stole Growing Soil from heaven to dam
the waters. Before Gun was finished, however, the Supreme
Sovereign sent the fire god Zhu Rong to execute him for his
theft. The Growing Soil was taken back to heaven, and the
floods continued. However, Gun's body didn't decay, and
when it was cut apart three years later, his son Yu emerged
in the form of a horned dragon. Gun's body also transformed
into a dragon at that time and thenceforth lived quietly in
the deeps. The Supreme Sovereign was fearful of Yu's power,
so he cooperated and gave Yu the Growing Soil and the use
of the dragon Ying. Yu led other gods to drive away Gong
Gong, distributed the Growing Soil to remove most of the
flood, and led the people to fashion rivers from Ying's
tracks and thus channel the remaining floodwaters to the
sea. [Walls, pp. 94-100]

The goddess Nu Kua fought and defeated the chief of a
neighboring tribe, driving him up a mountain. The chief,
chagrined at being defeated by a woman, beat his head
against the Heavenly Bamboo with the aim of wreaking
vengeance on his enemies and killing himself. He knocked it
down, tearing a hole in the sky. Floods poured out,
inundating the world and killing everyone but Nu Kua and
her army; her divinity made her and her followers safe from
it. Nu Kua patched the hole with a plaster made from stones
of five different colors, and the floods ceased. [Werner, p. 225; Vitaliano, p. 163]

A son was borne to a fairy and a laurel tree; the fairy
returned to heaven when the boy was seven years old. One
day, rains came and lasted for many months, flooding the
earth with a raging sea. The laurel, in danger of falling,
told his son to ride him when it came uprooted by the
waves. The boy did so, floating on the tree for many days.
One day a crowd of ants floated by and cried out to be
saved. After asking the tree for permission, the boy gave
them refuge on the branches of the laurel. Later, a group
of mosquitoes flew by and also asked to be saved. Again,
the boy asked the tree for permission, was granted it, and
gave the mosquitoes rest. Then another boy floated by and
asked to be saved. This time the tree refused permission
when its son asked. The son asked twice more, and after the
third time the tree said, "Do what you like," and the son
rescued the other boy. At last the tree came to rest on the
summit of a mountain. The insects expressed their gratitude
and left. The two boys, being very hungry, went and found a
house where an old woman lived with her own daughter and a
foster-daughter. As everyone else in the world had perished
and the subsiding waters allowed farming again, the woman
decided to marry her daughters to the boys, her own going
to the cleverer boy. The second boy maliciously told the
woman that the other boy could quickly gather millet grains
scattered on sand. The woman tested this claim, and the
first boy despaired of ever succeeding, when the ants came
to his aid, filling the grain bag in a few minutes. The
other boy had watched, and he told the woman that the task
hadn't been done by the first boy himself, so the woman
still couldn't decide which daughter to marry to which boy.
She decided to let the boys decide by chance, going to one
room or another in total darkness. A mosquito came and told
the Son of the Tree which room the old woman's daughter was
in, so those two were married, and the second boy married
the foster-daughter. The human race is descended from those
two couples. [Zong, pp. 16-18]

Young Gim's father was killed by robbers, and Gim set
out to track them and get revenge. On the way, he met
another bereaved boy hunting the same robbers. They became
sworn brothers, but they were separated when a storm upset
their ferry as they were crossing a river. Gim was rescued
by another boy who had been orphaned by the same robbers.
They too swore to be brothers but were separated when their
ferry sank in a storm. Gim was rescued and hidden by an old
woman; he was on the island of the robbers but was helpless
from his injuries. One day a mysterious man came by and
asked Gim to go with him. Gim lived with the man in the
mountains studying magic until he was sixteen, whereupon
the man told him to go and rescue the king from the
robbers, and that he would meet Gim again in three years
exactly. Gim set out, finding a magic horse, arms, and
armor along the way, and arrived at the king's castle when
it was on the point of surrender. In the enemy camp, he
found a black face belching fire at the castle, a genii
studying astrology, a rat whose swinging tail produced a
flood which threatened the castle, and a giant who hurled
flames at the King's camp. Gim fought them with his magic
but was overwhelmed by their numbers. He fled with the king
to an island, but the rat tried to submerge it with an even
greater flood from its tail. A butterfly led Gim to a
cavern in a distant mountain, where he met the first boy he
had encountered. They went back to fight together, but the
other boy was killed and the island submerged, and Gim and
the King retreated to a second island. Gim was led by a
crow to another cavern in the mountains where he met his
other friend. They returned to fight, but again the friend
was killed, the island submerged, and Gim and the King had
to retreat. When a third island was threatened with the
flood, they took refuge on a ship. Gim's mentor then came
(three years having elapsed) and with his magic called down
thunderbolts which destroyed all of the enemy. Gim went to
the enemy island, found his mother, and married the sister
of his second friend. [Zong, pp.
62-66]

The River Dedong flooded the countryside. An old man in
Pyongyang, rowing about in a boat, found and rescued a
deer, a snake, and a boy from the waters. He carried them
to shore and released them, but the boy had lost his
parents in the flood and so became the man's adopted son.
One day the deer came and led the man to a buried treasure
of gold and silver, and the man became rich. The foster-son
became reckless with the money, and he and his father
argued. The boy accused the man of theft, and the man was
imprisoned. The snake came to him in his cell and bit his
arm, which then swelled painfully. But then the snake
returned with a small bottle. The man applied the medicine
to his arm, which cured it at once. In the morning, he
heard that the magistrate's wife was dying of a snakebite,
so he sent word that he could cure her. This he did with
the snake's ointment. He was released, and the foster-son
was arrested and punished. [Zong, pp.
94-95]

A foundling infant grew up incredibly fast and soon
showed signs of fantastic strength. He earned the name
"Iron-shoes" from the footwear he needed. He set out on a
journey and met with and joined three other extraordinary
men--"Nose-wind", who had extraordinarily powerful breath;
"Long-rake", who crumbled mountains with his rake, and
"Waterfall", who made rivers by pissing. They went to an
old woman's home and were invited to spend the night, but
the woman locked them in, and the men realized that she and
her four sons were tigers in disguise. The tigers tried to
kill them by roasting the room, but Nose-wind kept it cool
by his blowing. The next day, the woman challenged them to
a contest of gathering pine trees while her sons stacked
them. When it became clear that the four brothers ripped up
the trees faster than the tigers could stack them, the
woman set fire to the logs. Waterfall, though, made water
which not only put out the fire, but created a flood that
nearly drowned the tigers. Nose-wind blew on the water and
froze it. Iron-shoes skated out and kicked the heads off
the tigers, and Long-rake broke up the ice and threw it far
and wide, eliminating any trace of the flood. [Zong, pp. 162-166]

Sing Bonga created man from the dust of the ground, but
they soon grew wicked and lazy, would not wash, and spent
all their time dancing and singing. Sing Bonga regretted
creating them and resolved to destroy them by flood. He
sent a stream of fire-water (Sengle-Daa) from
heaven, and all people died save a brother and sister who
had hidden beneath a tiril tree (hence tiril
wood is black and charred today). God thought better of his
deed and created the snake Lurbing to stop the fiery rain.
This snake held up the showers by puffing up its soul into
the shape of a rainbow. Now Mundas associate the rainbow
with Lurbing destroying the rain. [Frazer, p. 196]

When Pilchu Haram and Pilchu Budhi, the first man and
woman, reached adolescence, fire-rain fell for seven days.
They took refuge in a stone cave and emerged unharmed when
the flood was over. Jaher-era asked them where they had
been, and they replied that they had been under a rock. [Frazer, p. 197]

When social distinctions were assigned to the various
tribes, the Marndis were overlooked. Ambir Singh and Bir
Singh, two members of that tribe from Mount Here, were
incensed at this slight, and they prayed for fire from
heaven to destroy the other tribes. Fire fell and
devastated the country, destroying half the population. The
home of Ambir Singh and Bir Singh was stone, so they
escaped unhurt. Kisku Raj heard what had happened and was
told that Ambir Singh and Bir Singh were responsible. He
ordered them to explain themselves, and they told of their
being overlooked in the distribution of distinctions. Kisku
Raj told them not to act thus, and they would receive an
office. They stopped the fire-rain, and the Marndi were
appointed stewards over the property of kings and nobles
and over all rice. [Frazer, pp.
197-198]

While people were at Khojkaman, their misdeeds became so
great that the creator Thakur Jiu sent a fire-rain to
punish them. Only two people escaped, in a cave on Mount
Haradata. [Frazer, p. 198]

The first people became incestuous and unheedful of God
or their betters. Sirma Thakoor, or Sing Bonga, the
creator, destroyed them, some say by water and others say
by fire. He spared sixteen people. [Gaster, p. 96]

A kite once quarrelled with the crab and pecked a hole
in its skull (which can still be seen today). In revenge,
the crab caused the sea and rivers to swell until the
waters reached the sky. The only survivors were a brother
and sister who took a pair of all kinds of animals with
them in a huge chest. They floated for seven days and
nights. Then the brother heard a cock crowing outside, sent
by the spirits to signal that the flood had abated. All
disembarked, birds first, then the animals, then the two
people. The brother and sister did not know how they would
live, for they had eaten all the rice that was stored in
the chest. However, a black ant brought two grains of rice.
The brother planted them, and the plain was covered with a
rice crop the next morning. [Gaster,
p. 98]

A brother and sister tried to dig out a bamboo rat, but
it told them it was digging to escape a coming flood and
instructed them to seal themselves inside a drum to save
themselves. They did so. Some richer people took refuge on
rafts, but the rafts overturned when the waters receded,
and those people died. The brother and sister made a hole,
saw water, sealed the drum again, and waited longer. The
second time they made a hole, they saw dry land and
emerged. (In another version, they took along a needle and
knew the flood was over when no water leaked in the hole
they poked.) They looked far and wide for mates, but they
were the only survivors. A malcoha cuckoo sang to them,
"brother and sister should embrace one another." They slept
together. After seven years, the child was born as a gourd.
They put it behind their house and went about their work.
Later, hearing noises from the gourd, they burnt a hole in
its shell, and people of the different races came out,
first Rumeet, then Kammu, Thai, Westerner, and Chinese. The
Rumeet are darker because they rubbed off charcoal around
the hole. At first, none of those people could speak. They
sat down in a row on a tree trunk, it broke, and they all
cried out, and with that they were able to speak. Later,
the different people all learned different ways of writing.
[Lindell et. al., pp. 268-278]

Some time after their creation, men grew disobedient. In
anger, Puluga, the Creator, sent a flood which covered the
whole land, except perhaps Saddle Peak where Puluga himself
resided. Of all creatures, the only survivors were two men
and two women who had the fortune to be in a canoe when the
flood came. The waters sank and they landed, but they found
themselves in a sad plight. Puluga recreated birds and
animals for their use, but the world was still damp and
without fire. The ghost of one of the peoples' friends took
the form of a kingfisher and tried to steal a brand from
Puluga's fire, but he accidentally dropped it on the
Creator. Incensed, Puluga hurled the brand at the bird, but
it missed and landed where the four flood survivors were
seated. After the people had warmed themselves and had
leisure to reflect, they began to murmur against the
Creator and even plotted to murder him. However, the
Creator warned them away from such rash action, explained
that men had brought the flood on themselves by their
disobedience, and that another such offense would likewise
be met with punishment. That was the last time the Creator
spoke with men face to face. [Gaster,
pp. 104-105]

Thunder God demanded half of Bubo's crops, but Bubo
tricked him into taking the tops of taro and the roots of
rice. Thunder God retaliated by withdrawing rain from the
earth. Bubo led his people to open the copper sluice gate
of the heavenly river a crack, but Thunder God closed it
tight and lifted heaven higher so the people couldn't come
again. Bubo went to the Dragon King to demand water of him.
Dragon King refused, but he was forced to release his
stream when Bubo held him tight and the people plucked out
almost all his beard. By the third year, this stream dried
up. Bubo climbed the sun-moon tree on Mount Bachi to heaven
to fight Thunder God. Qigao, one of the thunder soldiers,
told Bubo that Thunder God was determined to kill people
with drought and pointed out his location. Bubo caught him
and made him promise to send rain in three days, but
Thunder God went back on his promise. Qigao brought world
that Thunder God was grinding his axe. Bubo put a slippery
surface on his roof and instructed his wife and children to
stand ready with clubs and a net. Thunder God came in a
rainstorm and tried to land on Bubo's house but slipped off
and was captured. Bubo imprisoned Thunder God in a granary,
warning his family not to give him an ax or any water, but
his children, Fuyi and his sister, were enticed to give him
some indigo ink, and the moisture gave Thunder God the
strength to escape. The children were angry that he had
tricked them, but Thunder God promised that he would repay
them by saving them from the flood that he would bring in a
few days. He gave them one of his teeth and told them to
plant it. They did so, and it grew into a vine with a giant
gourd fruit. Fuyi and his sister scooped out the pith and
entered it. Thunder God breached the dike holding back the
river of heaven, and Dragon King, in revenge against Bubo's
plucking his beard, released his lake water, too. The water
rose over the mountains as high as heaven's ceiling. Bubo,
though, rode the waves floating on an inverted umbrella. He
made for the gate of heaven and attacked Thunder God,
chopping off his feet. (Thunder God later replaced them
with chicken feet.) Thunder God, with the help of Dragon
King, rapidly made the water subside so Bubo could not
reach him. Bubo and his umbrella dropped from the sky and
were smashed. Bubo's heart was thrown onto the ceiling of
heaven and remains there as the planet Venus. Fuyi and his
sister landed safely in the soft gourd. They wandered the
earth but found nobody else. They came across a turtle
which said the two of them should marry. Fuyi and his
sister said, "How can a brother and sister marry?" and said
if the turtle can come back to life after they beat it
death, they would marry. They beat it to death, whereupon
it laughed and crawled away. A bamboo also told them to
marry; they cut it down, and it came back to life and
laughed as they left. Venus spoke to them, told them to
build fires on two different mountains, and if the smoke
columns joined, they could marry. They did so, the smoke
columns came together, Venus laughed, and the brother and
sister married. They gave birth to a fleshball. Not knowing
what to do with it, they minced it up and scattered the
pieces, and the pieces became men and women. Qigao became a
worm, which Thunder God attacks when he comes to the
surface. [L. Miller, pp. 137-150]

Grandpa Xiang and his wife Ya lived at the food of Sun
mountain, barely getting by. One day, there was a beautiful
rainbow after a downpour, and Xiang followed it as he
picked bamboo shoots. He saw an eagle clutch a tiny red
snake. In pity for the snake, Xiang yelled and threw his
basket at the eagle, which dropped the snake and flew away.
Xiang saw the snake disappear in a flash of light, and a
column of smoke drifted up the mountain. That night he
dreamed that a golden dragon thanked him for saving the
life of the dragon's daughter and told him to visit.
Grandma Ya had the same dream, so they set out, with their
grandchildren, across three mountain passes and up a long
slope, as the dream had directed. A beautiful girl came and
told them that she had gone out earlier, entranced by the
rainbow, and Xiang had rescued her. She led them to an
idyllic pond and invited them to settle there. They did,
and they grew younger and stronger from eating the fish of
the pool. After a year, Xiang went back to his village and
invited the people to live up on Sun Mountain with him.
They did so and lived happily for some time. But an evil
man wasted fish, polluted the pond, and finally poisoned
all the fish. One dying fish told Xiang to make it a
corn-flour body, feed it for 81 days on dew, and make a
wooden house for himself. He did so, and all the people
except the evil man made wooden houses. After 81 days, a
fierce gale came, while the sky darkened and lightning
flashed. The fish shook itself and turned into a girl and
then into the red snake, which flew off to join the golden
dragon Xiang had seen in his dreams. It told him to take
his things into his wooden house and stay there. Pelting
rain then fell from the sky, and soon there was a vast
flood. The evil man was helpless in his stone house, but
the wooden houses of the others floated. The golden dragon
shook his body, and the upper half of Sun Mountain erupted
into the sky. The body of the evil man was buried by the
falling stones. The others floated peacefully down the
mountain and carved a giant stone fish where they settled.
This statue and the lower part of Sun Mountain can be seen
near the town of Shuilong. [L.
Miller, pp. 107-112]

Long ago, the middle world, of many worlds beneath the
sky, had no race of kings (the Shan). Animals emerged from
bamboos which cracked open and went to live in deep
forests. Hpi-pok and Hpi-mot came from heaven to
Möng-hi on the Cambodia river and became the ancestors
of the Shan. But a time came when they offered no
sacrifices to their gods. Ling-lawn, the storm god, sent
large cranes to devour the people, but there were too many
people to eat all of them. He sent lions, but they could
not eat all of the people either. He send snakes, but the
people attacked and killed them. A great drought came for
the first four months of the new year, and many people died
of thirst and famine. But the storm-god had not finished
his battle. Sitting in his palace beneath a beautiful
umbrella, he called his counsellors. Kaw-hpa, Hseng-kio,
old Lao-hki, Tai-long, Bak-long, the smooth-talker
Ya-hseng-hpa, and others came and bowed down to worship.
Speaking in the language of men (Shan), they decided to
destroy the human race. They sent for Hkang-hkak, god of
streams and ponds, of alligators and water animals, and
bade him descend with the clouds and report to the
distinguished sage Lip-long. Lip-long had seen ill omens
while auguring with chicken bones and knew a calamity was
coming, so he was not surprised to hear the water-god tell
him that Ling-lawn, the storm god, would soon flood the
earth and destroy everything on it. Hkang-hkak told the
sage to build a strong raft and take a cow on it, but not
to warn anyone else, not even his wife or children.
Lip-long sorrowfully bent to his task while even his family
mocked his seemingly futile work. Fearing the gods, he
heeded the order not to warn anyone. A few days after he
finished the raft, the flood came, rushing violently. Only
Lip-long and the cow survived on the waters. He grieved to
see the bodies of his family. Thus the race of Shans
perished. Their spirits went to the mansions of heaven,
were refreshed by a meal of cold crab, and found the spirit
land a festive and charming place. Meanwhile, the stench of
corpses filled the earth. Ling-lawn sent serpents to devour
them, but there were too many to eat. In anger he wanted to
destroy the snakes, but they escaped into a cave. He sent
999,000 tigers, but they couldn't eat all the corpses,
either. More angry now, he hurled thunderbolts at the
tigers, but they too escaped into caves. Then he sent
Hsen-htam and Hpa-hpai, the gods of fire, who descended on
their horses to one of only three elevations of land. They
sent a great conflagration of fire over the entire earth.
When he saw the fire coming, Lip-long killed the cow with a
stick, cut it open with his sword, and crawled in its
belly. There he found a gourd seed. The fire swept over the
cow, and Lip-long came out. He asked Hkang-hkak what to do,
and the water god told him to plant the gourd seed on a
level plot of ground. He did so. One gourd vine grew up a
mountain and was scorched by the sun. One vine ran downward
and rotted and died from soaking in the water from the
flood. A third vine twined around bushes and trees.
Ling-lawn sent his gardener to care for it, and it bore
great fruit. Then Ling-lawn sent Sao-pang, god of the clear
sky, to prepare the earth for humans. Sao-pang dried what
remained of the flood with waves of heat. Ling-lawn broke
open a gourd with a thunderbolt, and people emerged from it
to till the land. Another bolt broke open a gourd. The
Shans therein asked god what to do, and he told them to go
and rule many lands. Other gourds were broken open to
release all kinds of animals, rivers, and plants. [Frazer, pp. 199-203]

In another version of this legend, the survivors were
the most righteous seven men and seven women, who crawled
into the dry shell of a giant gourd and survived the flood
floating in it. They emerged to replenish the drowned
earth. [Frazer, pp. 203-204]

When the Tsuwo ancestors were dispersed, a great flood
came, and everyone was forced to flee to the top of Mount
Niitaka-yama. In their haste, none had brought fire with
them, and the people suffered cold. Someone saw a sparkle
on the top of a neighboring mountain and asked who would go
to bring fire back. A goat volunteered, swam to the other
mountain, and brought back a burning cord between its
horns, but it tired from the swim, and it drooped its head
and extinguished the fire before it made it back to land.
The people next sent out a taoron (?), which
succeeded in the quest; the people gathered around the
animal and patted it, which is why it has such shiny skin
and small body today. The people were unsure how to lower
the water. A wild pig offered to swim off and break a bank
lower in the river, and it asked the people to care for its
children if it drowned. The people agreed, the pig swam
off, and soon the flood water sank. The people decided to
make a new river, with the help of the animals, to prevent
another great flood. A snake guided the people and hollowed
out the bed of the stream. Thousands of birds paved the
channel with pebbles. Other animals worked to fashion the
river banks and valleys. Only the eagle didn't help, and in
punishment, it is not allowed to drink from the river. The
goddess Hipararasa came from the south and formed plains by
crushing the mountains. At the central ranges, though, an
angry bear protecting its homeland confronted her and bit
and wounded her child, so the goddess desisted. The land
hardened, so the mountains still stand today. The survivors
from Mount Niitaka-yama, in groups, wandered their various
ways. The idea of headhunting originated while they lived
on that mountain. [Frazer, pp.
229-232]

A heavy rain fell for many days, and a giant snake lay
across the river, blocking it so that the whole land
flooded. Many people drowned, and the few survivors fled to
the highest mountain, but they still feared as the waters
kept rising. A crab appeared and cut through the body of
the snake, and the flood subsided. [Frazer, p. 232]

A giant crab caught and tried to eat a large snake, but
the snake managed to escape into the ocean. Immediately a
great flood covered the world. The ancestors of the Bunun
escaped to Mount Usabeya (Niitaka-yama) and Mount Shinkan,
where they lived by hunting until the waters receded. They
returned to find their fields washed away, but a stalk of
millet remained. They planted its seeds and subsisted on
its produce. Before the flood, the land had been quite
flat; many mountains and valleys were formed by it. [Frazer, pp. 232-233]

The god Kakumodan Sappatorroku and the goddess Budaihabu
descended to a place called Taurayan with the boy Sura, the
girl Nakao, a pig and a chicken. One day, two other gods,
Kabitt and Aka, while hunting nearby, saw the pig and
chicken and coveted them. They asked Kakumodan for them,
but as they had nothing to trade, they were refused. This
angered them, and they plotted to kill Kakumodan. They
called upon the four sea gods, Mahahan, Mariyaru,
Marimokoshi, and Kosomatora, who consented to help. They
told Kabitt and Aka that in five days, when the moon was
full, the sea will make a booming sound, and they should
escape to a mountain where there are stars. On the fifth
day, the two gods fled to a mountain, and when they reached
the summit, the sea began booming and rising. Kakumodan's
house was flooded, but he and his wife escaped by climbing
a ladder to the sky. In their haste, though, they forgot
the children, and upon reaching safety, they futilely
called for them. Sura and Nakao, however, had climbed into
a wooden mortar and had floated to safety to the Ragasan
mountain. The brother and sister, now alone in the world,
feared to offend the ancestral gods, but of necessity they
became man and wife. To mitigate the wrath of the gods,
they contacted each other as little as possible and
interposed a mat between them in their bed. They had three
sons and two daughters. During Nakao's first pregnancy, the
first grain of millet was found in her ear, and in time the
two learned the proper ritual for cultivating that grain.
[Frazer, pp. 226-227]

In an earthquake, mountains tumbled down, the earth
gaped, and hot subterranean waters gushed out and flooded
the whole earth. Two sisters and a brother escaped in a
wooden mortar and floated south to Rarauran. They landed
and climbed Mount Kaburugan to view the countryside; then
the sisters searched south and the brother searched west
for good land. Finding none, they returned and ascended to
the mountain's summit again. But the older sister tired
half way up, and when the other two returned for her, they
found she had turned into a rock. The brother and sister
wanted to return to their homeland, but the mortar was
rotten and no longer sea-worthy. Wandering away on foot,
they saw smoke in the distance and, fearing another
eruption and flood, hastened away. But the sister collapsed
in exhaustion, and they had to remain. Catastrophe ceased
to threaten, and they decided to settle there. They were
uncertain whether it would be proper for them to marry, so
they asked the sun as it rose the next morning. The sun
answered immediately that they may marry. A few months
later, the wife conceived, but she delivered only two
abortions. They threw these in the river. One went straight
down and became the ancestor of fish, and the other swam
across and gave rise to crabs. Next morning, the brother
asked the moon why their offspring should be fish and
crabs. The moon answered that marriage between brother and
sister is strictly prohibited, but as they can find no
other mates, they must place a mat between them in their
marriage bed. They heeded this advice, and the wife soon
gave birth to a stone. They were again distraught and were
about to throw the stone in the river, but the moon told
them they must care for it nevertheless. Later, they
settled in a rich land called Arapanai, and in time the
brother died. Pitying the woman's loneliness, the moon told
her that she would soon have companions. Just five days
later, the stone swelled up and four children came from it,
some shod and some barefoot. Those with shoes were probably
the ancestors of the Chinese. [Frazer, pp. 227-229]

A brother and sister escaped a great deluge in a wooden
mortar. They landed on a high mountain, married, had
children, and founded the village of Popkok in a hollow of
the hills, where they thought themselves safe from another
deluge. [Gaster, p. 104]

The ground we stand on is merely a skin covering an
abyss of water. Long ago, Pirman, the deity, broke up this
skin, flooding and destroying the world. However, Pirman
had created a man and woman and placed them in a completely
closed ship of pulai wood. When at last this ship
came to rest, the couple nibbled their way out through its
side, and they saw land stretching to the horizon in all
directions. The sun had not yet been created, so it was
dark; when it grew light, they saw seven small rhododendron
shrubs and seven clumps of sambau grass. The couple
bemoaned their lack of children, but in time the woman
conceived in the calves of her legs, a male child coming
from the right calf and a female from the left. That is why
offspring from the same womb may not marry. All mankind are
descended from that first pair. [Gaster, p. 99]

One day a feast was made for a circumcision, during
which all manner of beasts were pitted to fight one
another. The last fight was between dogs and cats. During
this fight, a great flood came down from the mountains,
drowning everyone except two or three menials who had been
sent to the hills to gather firewood. Then the sun, moon,
and stars were extinguished. When light returned, there was
no land, and all the abodes of men had been overwhelmed.
[Gaster, p. 99]

A great drought dried up all the rivers. The old men
suggested digging in a river bed to find the soul of the
river. After three days of digging, a great spring gushed
forth rapidly enough to kill many of the diggers. While the
Ifugaos celebrated the waters, a storm came, the river kept
rising, and the elders advised people to run for the
mountains, as the river gods were angry. Only two people
made it to safety, a brother and sister, Wigan and Bugan,
on the separate mountains Amuyao and Kalawitan. Both had
enough food on the summits, but only Bugan had fire. After
six months, the waters receded, creating the rugged terrain
that exists today. Wigan traveled to his sister on Mt.
Kalawitan, and they settled in the valley. The sister later
found herself with child and ran away in shame, following
the course of the river. The god Maknongan, appearing as an
old man, assured her that her shame had no foundation,
since she and her brother would repopulate the world. [Demetrio, p. 262; Dixon, pp. 179-180]

Only a brother and sister named Wigam and Bugan survived
a primeval flood, on Mount Amuyas. [Gaster, p. 104]

Wigan's first son Kabigat went from Hudog (the Sky
World) to Earth World to hunt with his dogs, but the earth
was then entirely flat, causing no echoes by which he could
hear his dogs barking. He mused a while, went to the Sky
World, and came back with a large cloth with which he
closed the exit of the rivers to the sea. He returned to
Hudog and told Bongabong what he had done. Bongabong had
Cloud and Fog go to the house of Baiyuhibi, and Baiyuhibi
brought together his sons and bade them rain for three
days, stopping finally when Bongabong commanded. Wigan told
Kabigat to remove the stopper. When he did so, the waters
which covered the earth formed mountains and valleys as
they rushed out. Bongabong called on Mumba'an to dry the
earth. [Dixon, pp. 178-179]

Water covered the whole earth, and all the Atás
drowned except two men and a woman who were carried far to
sea. They would have perished, but a great eagle offered to
carry them on its back to their homes. One man refused, but
the other two people accepted and returned to Mapula. [Gaster, pp. 103-104]

A great flood once drowned all the world's inhabitants
except one pregnant woman. She prayed that her child would
be a boy, and it was. When he, Uacatan, grew up, he wed his
mother, and all Mandayas are descended from them. [Frazer, p. 225]

The earth once rested on the three horns of the giant
snake Naga Padoha, who grew tired of its burden and shook
it off into the sea. The god Batara Guru, to recover it
from the abyss, sent his daughter Puti-orla-bulan (who had
requested the mission). She came down on a white owl and
accompanied by a dog, but they found no place to rest.
Batara Guru let Mount Bakarra fall from heaven for her
abode; from it, the rest of the habitable earth gradually
arose. Puti-orla-bulan had three sons and three daughters
from whom the human race is descended. Later, the earth was
replaced onto the head of the snake, and there has been a
constant struggle between the snake, wanting to be free of
its burden, and the deity. Batara Guru sent his son
Layang-layang-mandi ("Diving Swallow") to bind Naga
Padoha's hands and feet, but the serpent still struggles
and causes earthquakes, and it will again throw the earth
into the sea when it breaks its fetters. When this happens,
men will either be transported to heaven or cast into a
flaming cauldron; the sun will approach close to our world,
and its flame will join with the cauldron's fire to consume
the material universe. [Frazer, pp.
217-218; Kelsen, p. 133]

Debata, the Creator, sent a flood to destroy every
living thing when the earth grew old and dirty. The last
pair of humans took refuge on the highest mountain, and the
flood had already reached their knees, when Debata repented
his decision to destroy mankind. He tied a clod of earth to
a thread and lowered it. The last pair stepped onto it and
were saved. As the couple and their descendants multiplied,
the clod increased in size, becoming the earth we inhabit
today. [Gaster, p. 100]

The mountains quarrelled over which of them was the
highest. In vexation, their great ancestor Baluga Luomewona
caused the oceans to rise by throwing into a sea a comb
which became a giant crab which stopped up the ocean's
outlet sluices. The water rose to cover all but the tops of
two or three mountains. The people who had escaped to these
mountains with their cattle survived. [Kelsen, p. 133, Gaster, p. 100; Dixon, pp. 181-182]

The tide rose so high it overflowed the island. All
drowned except one woman, who survived through the
fortunate chance that her hair got caught in a thorny tree
as she drifted along on the tide. When the flood sank, she
came down from the tree and found herself alone. Hungry,
she searched for food and finding none inland, went to the
beach hoping to catch a fish. She found a fish, but it hid
in one of the corpses left by the flood. She picked up
stone and hit the corpse, but the fish escaped and headed
inland. She followed, but soon met a living man. The man
told her that he had to returned to life as a consequence
of somebody knocking on his dead body. The woman told him
her story, and they returned to the beach and restored the
population by knocking on the drowned people. [Gaster, pp. 100-101]

Some men of Kampong Tudu, looking for wood for a fence,
came upon what seemed to be a great tree trunk lying on the
ground. They began to cut it, but blood came from the cuts,
and, following it to one end, they found it was a giant
snake. They staked it to the ground, killed it, and skinned
it. They went home, feasted on its flesh, and made a great
drum from the skin, but the drum produced no sound. In the
middle of the night, the drum began sounding "Duk Duk Kagu"
on its own. Then a great hurricane came and swept away all
the houses, with the people in them. Some were carried out
to sea; others settled in various places and gave rise to
present villages. [Dixon, p. 181]

Some women gathered bamboo shoots, sat on a log, and
began paring them. But they noticed the trunk exuded drops
of blood with each cut of their knives. Some men came by
and saw that the trunk was actually a giant, torporous boa
constrictor. They killed it, cut it up, and took it home to
eat. While they were frying the pieces, strange noises came
from the frying pan and a torrential rain began. The rain
continued until only the highest hill remained above water.
Only a woman, dog, rat, and a few small creature survived.
The woman noticed that the dog had found shelter from the
rain under a creeper warmed by the rubbing between the
creeper and a tree in the wind. She took the hint, rubbed
the creeper against a piece of wood, and produced fire for
the first time. The woman took the fire-drill for her mate
and gave birth to a son called Simpang-impang. He was only
half a man, with only one arm, one leg, etc. Some time
later, the Spirit of the Wind carried off some rice which
Simpang-impang had spread out to dry. Simpang-impang
demanded compensation. The Spirit of the Wind refused but
was vanquished in a series of contests and restored
Simpang-impang's missing parts. [Gaster, pp. 101-102]

When the flood came, a man named Trow made a boat from a
large wooden mortar previously used for pounding rice. He
took with him his wife, a dog, pig, cat, fowl, and other
animals, and rode out the flood. Afterwards, to repeople
the earth, Trow fashioned additional wives out of a log,
stone, and anything else handy. Soon he had a large family
which became the ancestors of the various Dyak tribes. [Gaster, p. 102]

Once, when much of a ripe harvest was found despoiled, a
watch was kept, and a great serpent was seen to lower
itself from the sky and feed on the rice. People rushed up
and cut off its head, and one of the men fed on some of the
flesh the following morning. No sooner had he done so,
however, when a terrible storm arose, causing a flood which
killed all but the few who escaped to the highest hills.
[Dixon, pp. 180-181]

A great deluge once drowned many people. A few people
survived by escaping in boats to the one mountain peak
remaining above water. They dwelt there for three months
until the flood subsided. [Gaster, p.
102]

A flood once covered everything but the summit of Mount
Wawom Pebato (seashells on the hills are evidence). Only a
pregnant woman and a pregnant mouse escaped in a pig's
trough, paddling with a pot-ladle. After the waters had
descended, the woman saw a sheaf of rice hanging from an
uprooted tree which drifted ashore where she was standing.
The mouse got it down for her, but demanded in recompense
that mice should thereafter have the right to eat part of
the harvest. The woman gave birth to a son, took him for
her husband, and by him had a son and daughter who became
mankind's ancestors. [Gaster, p.
102]

As a great worldwide flood receded, the mountain Noesake
emerged with its sides clothed with trees whose leaves were
shaped like female genitalia. Only three people survived on
the top of the mountain. The sea-eagle brought tidings of
other mountains emerging from the waters, and the people
went thither. By means of the remarkable leaves, they
repopulated the world. [Gaster, p.
103]

In former times, the sea flooded the earth and destroyed
all plants and animals; only the peak of Lakimola remained
above water. A man, with his wife and children, took refuge
there, but the tide kept slowly rising for some months.
They prayed to the sea to return to its old bed. The sea
answered, "I will do so, if you give me an animal whose
hairs I cannot count." A pig, goat, dog, and hen failed
this test, but when the man threw in a cat, the sea sank
abashedly. An osprey appeared and sprinkled some dry earth
on the waters, and the family descended to a new home. The
Lord commanded that the osprey bring all kinds of seed to
the man for him to cultivate. After harvests on Rotti,
people still set up a sheaf of rice as an offering to Mount
Lakimola. [Gaster, p. 103]

Dooy, the forefather of the Nages, was saved from a
great flood in a ship. His grave occupies the center of the
public square at Boa Wai, their capital, and is the center
of their harvest festival. [Gaster,
p. 103]

In one version of the myth of the Wawalik sisters, the
sisters, with their two infant children, camped by the
Mirrirmina waterhole. Some of the older sister's menstrual
blood fell into the well. The rainbow serpent Yurlunggur
smelled the blood and crawled out of his well. He spit some
well water into the sky and hissed to call for rain. The
rains came, and the well water started to rise. The women
hurriedly built a house and went inside, but Yurlunggur
caused them to sleep. He swallowed them and their sons.
Then he stood very straight and tall, reaching as high as a
cloud, and the flood waters came as high as he did. When he
fell, the waters receded and there was dry ground. [Buchler, pp. 134-135]

Two orphaned children were left in the care of a man
called Wirili-up, who shirked the responsibility. The
children, always hungry, cried so much that a
ngaljod (rainbow serpent) rose from his waterhole
and flooded the countryside. Wirili-up fled, but the
children drowned. [Mountford, p.
74]

People dividing fish always gave the man Crow the poor
quality ones. Crow cut down a big paperbark tree, which
fell across a creek. Crow sat on the tree crying out,
"Waag. . . Waag!" As he did, the creek grew wider and
wider, dividing the island into two islands. Crow turned
into a bird and flew over the people. The splash from the
tree caused the water to rise, and the people, who were all
on the bank of the creek, all drowned. On hearing what
happened, Blanket Lizard swam towards South Goulburn Island
in search of his wife, but halfway across he drowned and
turned into a reef. [Berndt &
Berndt, p. 40]

The woman Gulbin traveled from the south, looking for a
place to put herself as djang. At length, she killed
a snake, began cooking it, and slept while it cooked. But
the snake was the daughter of She who lives underground.
That snake made water rise, threatening to drown the woman,
and at last the Snake came up and ate her. Later the Snake
vomited her bones, which became like rock. [Berndt & Berndt, pp. 84-85]

Two girls traveled, making places. With fires, they
attracted two men to marry them. But one day the four of
them killed the daughter of Ngalyod, the Rainbow Snake. The
mother came looking for her child, and they saw storm and
rushing water coming. They tried to escape by climbing
rocks, but the water rose and drowned them. The Snake ate
them, carried their bones for a long time, and vomited them
out in the same place, named Malbaid. They became like
rocks. [Berndt & Berndt, pp.
279-280]

The first people were living in what is now the middle
of the sea. In ignorance, some of them knocked a
maar rock, a dangerous Dreaming rock. After they
went home, rain fell for a long time, and fresh water came
running in search of them. In panic, the people swam around
trying to get to dry land. There was no place they could go
except for the rock Aragaladi, but Aragaladi was not a real
rock; Snake had made it rise up for them. Snake came
looking for the people, urinating salt water. A man came
from the mainland in a canoe, but he drowned in the middle
of the sea. Snake came and swallowed the people and later
vomited their bones. She made the place deep with sea
water. Those first people became rocks. Nobody goes to
Aragaladi now. [Berndt & Berndt,
pp. 88-89]

An orphan boy was crying because the people in the
community were preoccupied with a circumcision ritual and
didn't feed him well. When his brother returned from
hunting and saw how thin he was, he told the people, "I'm
very sorry for my little brother. I'll finish all of you!"
He took Rainbow eggs and broke them, and water "jumped out"
and spread. The man took his brother up a hill, where he
became a rock. He went further up and became a rock
himself, along with his baskets. [Berndt
& Berndt, pp. 93-94]

Some people came from north and danced the
nyalaidj ceremony. While they danced, one girl
climbed a pandanus palm and was calling out, and an orphan
boy was crying. The people kept dancing. The crying and
calling upset the place, and water came up from underneath.
The people cried in fear, but they couldn't run away
because the ground became soft, and the water covered them.
Ngalyod the Rainbow Serpent ate them, first the people who
were calling out and the orphan who was crying. The name of
the place is Gaalbaraya; it is still a taboo place. [Berndt & Berndt, pp. 96-97]

All the honeycombs that a man cut out were no good. He
went on and cut and ate a palm tree. He heard bees talking,
saying "Gu-gu" ["water"]. He ran back to others and told
them that he had unknowingly done wrong to a djang
palm tree. They tried to burn the tree, but water came up
from it. One girl ran up a hill calling out; the others
climbed a manbaderi tree. The tree fell, and those
in it drowned. The girl became a rock. The place is named
Gudju-mandi; nobody goes there now. [Berndt & Berndt, pp. 100-101]

Two were traveling during the Dreamtime. One fell sick,
and the Wuraal bird came up. The other heard it and said,
"Maybe we're making ourselves wrong, coming into Dreaming."
That night, the bird repeatedly struck the dying one with
its claws, killing him. Water came up where it struck him.
The other tried to outrun the rising water, but he fell in
a hole, and all three went underwater and came into
Dreaming. [Berndt & Berndt, p.
194]

When a storm came up, two sisters who were gathering
shellfish swore at Namarangini, the spirit man who sang up
the rain. He heard, grabbed the younger sister, and tried
unsuccessfully to copulate with her while the older sister
beat him with a branch. He took her to the hut at his camp,
made a fire, and tried again, but he discovered there was a
cycad nut grinding stone in her vagina. He removed it with
her stick for beating cycad nuts, and then he copulated
with her easily. When they had finished, she made herself
into a fly and returned to her husband. Her husband
discovered the stone was missing, and he killed her by
pushing a heated stick through her vagina into her stomach.
The next morning, the other sister discovered that she was
dead and knew that her husband had killed her. The Fly and
Sandfly women cried for their sister and beat her husband,
driving him away. He died and turned into a certain
milkwood tree. When the women cried, rain fell heavily and
continued falling for several weeks. They made bark rafts.
A rush of water from inland washed them out to sea, to
Elcho and other islands. At sea, you can still hear them
crying. Women lost their grinding stones from their vagina
when the flood washed them out to sea. [Berndt & Berndt, pp. 287-289]

Crow got into an argument with two other men because he
accidentally let green ants contaminate their fish. They
took back their fish, and Crow took back the goose eggs he
had brought. They fought. Crow defeated them and left
saying they'd fight again. Crow went to his mother's tribe.
When the other two men appeared, the tribe put on a
ceremony rather than quarrelling more. When everyone else
had fallen asleep, Crow climbed a tree and chopped off a
branch, which fell and killed the two men. Then he poured
out a bag of honey which came down so heavily it flooded
the area. All the people turned into birds. [Berndt & Berndt, pp. 185-187]

During the Dreamtime flood, woramba, the Ark
Gumana carrying Noah, Aborigines, and animals, drifted
south and came to rest in the flood plain of Djilinbadu
(about 70 km south of Noonkanbah Station, just south of the
Barbwire Range and east of the Worral Range), where it can
still be seen today. The white man's claim that it landed
in the Middle East was a lie to keep Aborigines in
subservience. [Kolig, pp. 242-245]

Grumuduk, a medicine man who lived in the hills, had the
power to bring rain and to make plants and animals
plentiful. A plains tribe kidnapped him, wanting his power,
but Grumuduk escaped and decreed that wherever he walked in
the country of his enemies, salt water would rise in his
footsteps. [Flood, p. 179]

Long ago, two races, one white and one black, lived on
opposite shores of a great river. At first they were on
friendly terms, intermarrying, feasting together, etc. But
the whites were more powerful and had better spears and
boomerangs, so they came to feel superior and broke off
relations. Some time later, it rained for several months.
The river overflowed and forced the blacks to retreat into
the hinterland. When the rains stopped and the waters
receded, the blacks returned, to find that their neighbors
had vanished under a wide sea. [Vitaliano, p. 166]

Gabidji, Little Wallaby, traveled east carrying a full
waterbag. Djunbunbin, Thunder or Storm man, followed him,
angry because Gabidji had water. At Dagula, Djunbunbin's
thunder chant grew stronger, and a deluge of rain swept
away Gabidji's hut and some other Dreaming men who were
with him. Their bones were found by later miners. [Berndt & Berndt, pp. 42-43]

Yaul was thirsty, but his brother Marlgaru refused to
let him have any water from his own full kangaroo-skin
waterbag. While Marlgaru was out hunting, Yaul sought and
found the bag. He jabbed it with a club, tearing it. Water
poured out, drowning both brothers and forming the sea. It
was spreading inland, too, but Bird Women came from the
east and restrained the waters with a barrier of roots of
the ngalda kurrajong tree. This is why ngalda
roots contain fresh water. [Berndt &
Berndt, pp. 44-45]

Djinta-djinta (Willy Wagtail) built a strong hut and
weathered a heavy rain for many days, but at last a heavy
deluge swept him and his hut into a waterhole, where he
remains. [Berndt & Berndt, p.
188]

Djunban, a rain-maker, was hunting kangaroo rat with his
magic boomerang, but he hit his "sister" Mandjia instead
and wounded her leg. She hid the boomerang in the sand so
he couldn't find it. The people were on the move, so he
carried Mandjia. Later, he gave her to a woman to carry so
he could search for his boomerang, and eventually he found
it. Some time later he taught his people how to make rain.
The next day they all traveled further. Mandjia died from
her injury and metamorphosed into a rock. After traveling
the next day, Djunban performed the rain-making ceremony
again, but he was grieving his sister and not concentrating
on his task, and the rain came too heavily. He tried to
warn his people, but the flood came and washed away all the
people and their possessions, forming a hill of silt. Gold
and bones found in that hill came from those people. [Berndt & Berndt, pp. 297-300]

A man's two wives ran away from him. He pursued them to
Encounter Bay, saw them at a distance, and angrily cried
out for the waters to rise and drown them. A terrible flood
washed over the hills and killed the two women. The waters
rose so high that a man named Nepelle, who lived at
Rauwoke, had to drag his canoe to the top of the hill now
called Point Macleay. The dense part of the Milky Way shows
his canoe floating in the sky. [Frazer, p. 236]

Bunjil, the creator, was angry with people because of
the evil they did, so he caused the ocean to flood by
urinating into it. All people were destroyed except those
whom Bunjil loved and fixed as stars in the sky, and a man
and a woman who climbed a tall tree on a mountain, and from
whom the present human race is descended. [Gaster, p. 114]

A man fishing in a lake caught a young bunyip, a
fearsome water monster. His companions begged him to let it
go lest he anger the water monsters by killing it, but he
refused to listen and began carrying it away. The
bunyip's mother, in a rage, caused the waters of the
lake to follow the man who had taken her young. The waters
rose higher and higher, covering all the country. The
people fled to a high hill, but the flood rose, and when it
touched their feet, they turned into black swans. [Dixon, p. 280]

A giant frog once swallowed all the water, and no one
else could get anything to drink. After many other animals
failed, eel, with his remarkable contortions, made the frog
laugh, releasing the water. Many were drowned in the flood.
The whole of mankind would have perished if the pelican had
not picked up survivors in his canoe. [Roheim, p. 156; Gaster, p. 114]

Long ago, a great flood covered the country. All drowned
except a man and two or three women who took refuge on a
mud island near Port Albert. Pelican came by in his canoe
and went to help them. He fell in love with one of the
women. He ferried the others to the mainland, but left her
for last. Afraid of being alone with him, the woman dressed
a log in her opossum rug so it looked like her, left it by
the fire, and swam to the mainland. The pelican returned
and flew into a passion when the log dressed as a woman
wouldn't answer him. He kicked it, which only hurt his foot
and made him angrier. He began to paint himself white so
that he might fight the woman's husband. Another pelican
came up when he was halfway through with these
preparations, but not knowing what to make of the strange
half black and half white creature, pecked him and killed
him. That is why pelicans are now black and white. [Dixon, pp. 279-280; Gaster, pp. 113-114]

The animals, birds, and reptiles became overpopulated
and held a conference to determine what to do. The
kangaroo, eagle-hawk, and goanna were the chiefs of the
three respective groups, and their advisors were koala,
crow, and tiger-snake. They met on Blue Mountain.
Tiger-snake spoke first and proposed that the animals and
birds, who could travel more readily, should relocate to
another country. Kangaroo rose to introduce platypus, whose
family far outnumbered any others, but the meeting was then
adjourned for the day. On the second day, while the
conference proceeded with crow taunting koala for his
inability to find a solution, the frilled lizards decided
to act on their own. They possessed the knowledge of
rain-making, and they spread the word to all of their
family to perform the rain ceremony during the week before
the new moon. Thus would they destroy the over-numerous
platypus family. They did their ceremonies repeatedly, and
a great storm came, flooding the land. The frilled lizards
had made shelters on mountains, and some animals managed to
make their way there, but nearly all life was destroyed in
the great flood. When the flood ended and the sun shone
again, the kangaroo called animals together to discover how
the platypus family had fared. But they could not find a
single living platypus. Three years later, the cormorant
told emu that he had seen a platypus beak impression along
a river, but never saw a platypus. Because of the flood,
the platypuses had decided that the animals, birds, and
reptiles were their enemies and only moved about at night.
The animals organized a search party, and carpet-snake
eventually found a platypus home and reported its location
back to the others. Kangaroo summoned all the tribes
together, even the insect tribe. Fringed lizard was ejected
for doing mischief; he has turned ugly because of the hate
he dwells upon. The animals and birds found they were both
related to the platypus family; even the reptiles found
some relationship; and everyone agreed that the platypuses
were an old race. Carpet-snake went to the platypus home
and invited them to the assembly. They came and were met
with great respect. Kangaroo offered platypus his choice of
the daughter of any of them. Platypus learned that emu had
changed its totem so that the platypus and emu families
could marry. This made platypus decide it didn't want to be
part of any of their families. Emu got angry, and kangaroo
suggested the platypuses leave silently that night, which
they did. They met bandicoot along the way, who invited the
platypuses to live with them. The platypuses married the
bandicoot daughters and lived happily. Water-rats got
jealous and fought them but were defeated. Platypuses have
tried to be seperate from the animal and bird tribes ever
since, but not entirely successfully. [W. R. Smith, pp. 151-168]

Long ago, there were a great many different tribes, and
they quarrelled and made war on each other. The worship of
Tane, the creator, was being neglected and his doctrines
denied. Two prophets, Para-whenua-mea and Tupu-nui-a-uta,
taught the true doctrine about the separation of heaven and
earth, but others just mocked them, and they became angry.
So they built a large raft at the source of the Tohinga
River, built a house on it, and provisioned it with
fern-root, sweet potatoes, and dogs. Then they prayed for
abundant rain to convince men of the power of Tane. Two men
named Tiu and Reti, a woman named Wai-puna-hau, and other
women also boarded the raft. Tiu was the priest on the
raft, and he recited the prayers and incantations for rain.
It rained hard for four or five days, until Tiu prayed for
the rain to stop. But though the rain stopped, the waters
still rose and bore the raft down the Tohinga river and
onto the sea. In the eighth month, the waters began to
thin; Tiu knew this by the signs of his staff. At last they
landed at Hawaiki. The earth had been much changed by the
flood, and the people on the raft were the only survivors.
They worshipped Tane, Rangi (Heaven), Rehua, and all the
gods, each at a separate alter. After making fire by
friction, they made thanks-offerings of seaweed for their
rescue. Today, only the chief priest may go to those holy
spots. [Gaster, pp. 110-112; Kelsen, p. 133]

Two brothers-in-law of the hero Tawhaki attacked him and
left him for dead. He recovered, and retired with his own
warriors and their families to a high mountain, where he
built a fortified village. Then he called to the gods, his
ancestors, for revenge. The floods of heaven descended and
killed everyone on earth. This event was called "The
overwhelming of the Mataaho." [Gaster, p. 112]

In another version of the story, Tawhaki, a man, put on
a garment of lightning and was worshipped as a god. Once,
in a fit of anger, he stamped on the floor of heaven,
breaking it and releasing the celestial waters which
flooded the earth. [Gaster, p.
112]

In another version, the flood was caused by the copious
weeping of Tawhaki's mother. [Gaster,
p. 112]

Lohero and his brother were angry with their neighbors,
so they put a human bone into a small stream. Soon a great
flood came forth, and the people had to retreat to the
highest peaks until the sea receded. Some people descended,
and others made their homes on the ridges. [Gaster, p. 105; Kelsen, pp. 130-131]

The wife of a very good man saw a very big fish. She
called her husband, but he couldn't see it until he hid
behind a banana tree and peeked through its leaves. When he
finally saw it, he was horribly afraid and forbade his
wife, son, and two daughters to catch and eat the fish. But
other people caught the fish and, heedless of the man's
warning, ate it. When the good man saw that, he hastily
drove a pair of all kinds of animals into trees and climbed
into a coconut tree with his family. As soon as the wicked
men ate the fish, water violently burst from the ground and
drowned everyone on it. As soon as the water reached the
treetops, it sank rapidly, and the good man and his family
came down and laid out new plantations. [Gaster, p. 105]

A rising river caused a flood which overwhelmed Mount
Vanessa. Only a man and his wife, a pig, a cassowary, a
kangaroo, and a pigeon escaped. These became the ancestors
of humans and other species. The bones of the drowned
animals can still be found on Mount Vanessa. [Gaster, pp. 105-106]

People made the lizards angry first by making a lot of
noise and then by teasing them. Finally, the people
incurred the wrath of the Lizard Man, who caused it to rain
for days, and the water rose. People climbed to the highest
mountain, but still the rain came and the water rose
higher. People were drowning. Two brothers built a small
raft and climbed aboard. Others tried to climb on with
them, but the raft held only two. The two brothers floated
off, and only they survived the flood. [LaHaye & Morris, p. 231]

A flood covered the whole world except for the summit of
Mount Tauga. When the waves threatened to cover even that,
the rockface cracked and the diamond-studded head of
Radaulo, king of snakes, emerged. His fiery tongue licked
out to taste the waves, and the water, hissing, retreated.
Radaulo slowly uncoiled and pursued the water all the way
back to the ocean bed. [Eliot, p.
224]

The stars are the shining eyes of the gods. A man once
went into the sky and stole one of the eyes. (The Pelew
Islanders' money is made from it.) The gods were angry at
this and came to earth to punish the theft. They disguised
themselves as ordinary men and went door-to-door begging
for food and lodging. Only one old woman received them
kindly. They told her to make a bamboo raft ready and, on
the night of the next full moon, to lie down on it and
sleep. This she did. A great storm came; the sea rose,
flooded the islands, and destroyed everyone else. The
woman, fast asleep, drifted until her hair caught on a tree
on the top of Mount Armlimui. The gods came looking for her
again after the flood ebbed, but they found her dead. So
one of the women-folk from heaven entered the body and
restored it to life. The gods begat five children by the
old woman and then returned to heaven, as did the goddess
who restored her to life. The present inhabitants of the
islands are descendants of those five children. [Gaster, pp. 112-113; Dixon, p. 257]

Before humans, one of the Kaliths (deities) named
Athndokl visited an unfriendly village and was killed by
its inhabitants. Seven friendly gods, who went searching
for him, were met with unkindness except from the woman
Milathk, who told them of the death. They resolved
vengeance by flooding the village, and suggested Milathk
save herself by preparing a raft tied to a tree by a rope.
The flood came and covered the village at the next full
moon. Milathk perished in the flood, but was recalled to
life by the oldest Obakad god. He wanted to make her
immortal but was stopped by another god, Tariit. Milathk
became the mother of mankind. [Kelsen, p. 132]

A man and his wife, who was of supernatural origin,
could not satisfy the hunger of her father, named
Insatiable, who was also of supernatural origin. He had
grown so that he filled the entire council-house and had
eaten all the coconuts on the island. The husband, Kitimil,
saw one day that a mouse had been eating in his sugar-cane
field. His wife, Magigi, told him that it must have been
her father who had turned himself into a mouse. Kitimil
thought this was impossible, though, so he set a trap which
that night caught and killed the mouse. Magigi was
terrified that he had killed her father, and told him to
bring the mouse. Kitimil did so, and when he looked and saw
that the council-house was empty, he believed his wife. The
next morning, Magigi told Kitimil to take the mouse's blood
and four of its teeth and bury the body. When he had done
so, she said that a great flood will come and kill all the
people of Yap, so they must climb the highest mountain and
build a seven-story pile-dwelling there. They took some
leaves and oil and the blood and teeth of the mouse and
built the structure on the mountaintop. On the seventh day,
a great storm came, and the sea covered all of Yap. As the
water rose, Kitimil and Magigi climbed to higher stories of
their house. The deluge still rose when they reached the
top, so Magigi put some oil on a leaf and laid it on the
water, and immediately the storm ceased and the water
started abating. When the land was dry again, they found
that one other man had survived by lashing himself to an
outrigger anchored to a large stone. Magigi bore seven
children, who scattered across the land. [Dixon, pp. 256-257]

Naareau the Elder created the earth, but the sky and the
earth clove together with darkeness between them, for there
was no separation. Naareau the Younger, walking on the
overside of the sky, decided to go between, and with a
spell, created a slight cleft; he tapped on the sky three
times, and on the third tap it opened. He heard breathing
within, created the First Creature, a bat, by rubbing his
fingers together, and told it to look around. The Bat
reported finding a Company of Fools and Deaf Mutes. At
Naareau's direction, the Bat landed on their foreheads and
told Naareau their names. Naareau crawled in the cleft and,
with the Bat as his guide, went to the people. Naareau told
them to push up, and the sky was lifted a little, but they
could lift it only so high since the sky was rooted to the
land. Naareau sent Naabawe, one of the people, to summon
Riiki, the conger eel. Riiki was sleeping and bit Naabawe
when he was called. Naareau made a slip-noose and took two
of Octopus's ten legs for bait (which is why octopuses have
only eight legs today). With these, Naareau caught Riiki
and told it to push up on the sky against the land. While
Riiki pushed, Great Ray, Turtle, and Octopus tore at the
roots of the sky while Naareau sang. The Company of Fools
and Deaf Mutes stood by laughing. The roots of the sky were
torn loose. The sky was pushed high and the land sank. But
the sky had no sides, so Naareau sang and pulled down its
sides so it was shaped like a bowl. The Company of Fools
and Deaf Mutes were left swimming in the sea; they became
the sea creatures. [von Franz, pp.
151-154, 170]

Tilik and Tarai, who lived near a sacred spring where
they were making the land, discovered by the taste of their
cabbage that their mother had been urinating in their food.
They exchanged the food and ate hers. In anger, she rolled
away the stone which had confined the sea, and the sea
poured out in a great flood. This was the origin of the
sea. [Roheim, p. 152]

The legendary hero Qat made a great canoe out of one of
the largest trees in a dense forest at the center of the
island of Gaua. While he worked on it, his brothers jeered
at him for building a canoe so far from the sea. When the
canoe was finished, he gathered into his canoe his family
and some of all the living creatures, down to the smallest
ant, and he fastened a cover over it. A great deluge of
rain came; the hollow in the center of the island filled
with water which broke through the hills where a great
waterfall still descends. The water carried the canoe out
to sea and out of sight. The natives say Qat took the best
of everything with him and look forward to his return. [Gaster, p. 107]

The natives laughed at the old man Nol for making a
canoe far inland, but he declared that he would need no
help getting it to the sea; the sea would come to it. When
he had finished, rain fell in torrents, flooding the island
and drowning everybody. Nol's canoe was lifted by the
water. It struck a rock that was still out of water and
split the rock two. (These two rocks can still be seen.)
The waters then rushed back into the sea, leaving Lifou
dry. [Gaster, p. 107]

The great god Ndengei had a favorite bird, called
Turukawa, which would wake him every morning. His two
grandsons killed the bird and buried it to hide the crime.
Ndengei sent his messenger Utu to find the bird. The first
search proved fruitless, but a second search exposed the
grandsons' guilt. Rather than apologizing, they fled to the
mountains and took refuge with some carpenters, who built a
strong stockade to keep Ndengei at bay. In their fortress,
the rebels withstood Ndengei's armies for three months, but
then Ndengei caused the earth to be flooded with rain. The
rebels sat securely as the surrounding lands were
submerged, until the waters reached their walls. They
prayed to another god for direction, and they were brought
canoes (or taught how to make them) by Rokoro, the god of
carpenters, and his foreman Rokola. (By other accounts,
they were instructed to make floats out of the shaddock
fruit, or they floated in bowls.) They floated around
picking up other survivors. The receding tide left a total
of eight survivors on the island of Mbengha. Two tribes
were destroyed completely--one consisting entirely of women
and the other with tails like dogs. The natives of Mbengha
claim to rank highest of all the Fijians. [Kelsen, p. 131; Gaster, p. 106]

The rain god Aokeu ("Red Circle" for the red clay he
washes around the island), who was lowly born of the
drippings from stalactites, disputed with the ocean god Ake
to see which was more powerful. Ake summoned help from the
wind god Raka and his twin children Tikokura, who is seen
in the line of curling billows which break over reefs, and
Tane-ere-tue, who manifests in storm waves. They attacked
the coast, reaching the height of the Makatea, a raised
barrier reef plateau surrounding the island, hundreds of
feet high. Proof of their deeds may be seen in seashells
embedded in high rocks. Meanwhile, Aokeu caused five days
and nights of rain, washing the red clay and small stones
into the ocean and carving deep valleys. Rangi, the
people's first chief, had been forewarned and led his
people to Rangimotia, the central peak. Soon water covered
everything except a long narrow strip of soil, and the tide
continued rising. Rangi waded through water up to his chin
to reach the temple of the supreme god Rongo, and appealed
to him. Rongo looked at the war of the waters and cried
"Enough!" The sea subsided and the rain stopped, leaving
the island with its present landscape. Aokeu was judged the
victor, because the sea had been stopped by the rocky
heights, but but the rains flowed far into the ocean,
carrying red clay to mark their progress. [Frazer, pp. 246-248; Vitaliano, p. 168]

A chief named Taoiau, angered at his people for not
bringing him the sacred turtle, roused all the sea gods on
whose good will the islands depend. One, who sleeps at the
bottom of the sea, was roused to anger by the king's prayer
and stood straight up. A hurricane burst forth, and the sea
swept over the island of Rakaanga. A few inhabitants
survived by taking refuge on a mound. [Frazer, p. 249]

Shortly after the peopling of the world, a fisherman
carelessly let his hooks get entangled in the hair of the
sea god Ruahatu, who was reposing among the coral, and
disturbed the god's rest when wrenching them out. The angry
god surfaced, upbraided the fisherman, and threatened to
destroy the land in revenge. The fisherman prostrated
himself and apologized profusely. Moved by his penitence,
Ruahatu told him to go with his wife and child to
Toamarama, a small low island (not more than two feet above
sea level) in a lagoon on the east side of Raiatea. This he
did, taking also some domesticated animals. As the sun set,
the ocean waters began to rise and continued rising all
night. The other inhabitants fled to the mountains, but at
last even these were covered, and everyone on Raiatea
perished. When the waters receded, the fisherman and his
family returned to the mainland and became progenitors of
its present inhabitants. [Gaster, pp.
109-110; Roheim, p. 157]

Tahiti was destroyed by the sea. Even the trees and
stones were carried away by the wind. But two people were
saved. The wife took up her young chicken, her young dog,
and her kitten, and the husband took up his young pig. The
husband said they should escape to Mount Orofena, but the
wife said (correctly) that the flood would reach even
there, and they should go to Mount Pita-hiti instead, which
they did. They watched ten nights till the sea ebbed. The
land, though, remained without produce, and the fish in the
rock crevices were putrid. When the wind died away, stones
and trees began to fall from the heavens, where the winds
had carried them. To escape this new danger, the couple dug
a hole, lined it with grass, and covered it over with
stones and earth. They crept inside and listened to the
terrible crash of the falling stones. By and by, the
falling stones stopped, but to be safe they waited another
night before coming out. The land they found was desolated.
The woman brought forth two children, a son and a daughter,
but grieved about the lack of food. Again the mother
brought forth, but still there was no food. Then in three
days all the trees bore fruit. All people are descended
from that couple. [Gaster, pp.
108-109]

The Supreme God was angry and dragged the earth through
the sea. By a happy chance, the island of Tahiti broke off
and was preserved. [H. Miller, p.
287]

Lalohona, a woman from the depths of the sea, was
enticed ashore by Konikonia with a series of images. She
warned him that her parents, Kahinalii and
Hinakaalualumoana, would cause the ocean to flood the land
so that her brothers, the pao'o fish, may search for
her. At her suggestion, they fled to the mountains and
built their home in the tops of the tallest trees. After
ten days, Kahinalii sent the ocean; it rose and overwhelmed
the land. The people fled to the mountains, and the flood
covered the mountains; they climbed the trees, and the
flood rose above the trees and drowned them all. But the
waters began to subside just as they reached the door of
Konikonia's house. When the waters retreated, he and his
people returned to their land. This flood is called
kai-a-ka-hina-lii. [Barrère,
p. 23]

All the land was once overflowed by the sea, except for
the peak of Mauna Kea, where two humans survived. The event
is called kai a Kahinarii (sea of Kahinarii). There
was no ship involved. [Gaster, p.
110; Barrère, p. 22]

In the earliest times in Hawaii, there was no sea, nor
even fresh water. Pele came to Hawaii because she was
displeased over her husband having been enticed from her.
Her parents gave her the sea so she could bring her canoes.
At Kanaloa she poured the sea from her head. It rose until
it covered the high ground, leaving only a few mountains
not entirely submerged. She later caused it to recede to
what we see today. This sea was named after the mother of
Pele, Kahinalii, because the sea belonged to her; Pele
simply brought it. [Barrère,
pp. 23-24]

The people had turned to evil, so Kane punished their
sin with a flood. Nu'u and his company were saved by
entering into the Great-Canoe, a large canoe roofed over
like a house, which had been given them by Kane. The canoe
contained a number of things, and Nu'u ruled over the whole
like a chief. After the flood, these people repopulated the
islands. The waters came up as a wicked brother-in-law of
Nu'u was indulging himself in pleasure. He ran to enter the
ark, but his calls were unheard by those inside. He prayed
to the god Lono in the name of his sister but did not
escape. He became angry at the first pair of people who had
brought this trouble by bringing evil into the world, and
he prayed to Lono that the whole earth be destroyed and
that the first pair of people be brought back to life to
witness the trouble they caused. [Barrère, pp. 19-21]

Nuu was of the thirteenth generation from the first man.
The gods commanded Nuu to build an ark and carry on it his
wife, three sons, and males and females of all breathing
things. Waters came and covered the earth. They subsided to
leave the ark on a mountain overlooking a beautiful valley.
The gods entered the ark and told Nuu to go forth with all
the life it carried. In gratitude for his deliverance, Nuu
offered a sacrifice of pig, coconuts, and awa to the moon,
which he thought was the god Kane. Kane descended on a
rainbow to reproach Nuu for his mistake but left the
rainbow as a perpetual sign of his forgiveness. [Kalakaua, p. 37; Barrère, pp. 21-22]

A high chief had two boys killed for playing with his
drums. Their father Kamalo sought the help of the shark god
Kauhuhu to get revenge. Kauhuhu told the man to build a
special fence around his place and to collect 400 black
pigs, 400 red fish, and 400 white chickens. Months later,
Kauhuhu came in the form of a cloud. He caused a great
storm which washed everyone on the hillside, except Kamalo
and his people, into the harbor, where sharks devoured
them. [Westervelt, pp.
110-116]

In the first days, the water from the sea came up and
flooded all the earth except for a very high mountain in
the middle. A few animals escaped to this mountain, and a
few people survived in a boat, subsisting on fish. The
people landed on the mountain as the water subsided and
followed the retreating water to the coast. The animals
also descended. [Gaster, p. 120]

The ocean rose suddenly and continued rising until it
covered even the tops of mountains. Ice drifted on the
water, and when the flood subsided, ice was stranded to
form ice-caps on the tops of mountains. The shells and
bones of many shellfish, fish, seals, and whales were also
left high above sea level, where they may be found today.
Many people drowned, but many others were saved in their
boats. [Frazer, pp. 327-328]

A great flood broke over the land. Driven by the wind,
it submerged people's dwellings. The people formed a raft
by tying several boats together and pitched a tent against
the icy blast. They huddled together for warmth as uprooted
trees drifted past. Finally, a magician named An-odjium
("Son of the Owl") threw his bow in the water and commanded
the wind to be calm. Then he threw in his earrings, causing
the flood to subside. [Frazer, p.
327]

Noah invited all animals to save themselves aboard his
ark, but the mammoths thought there would not be much of a
flood and that their legs were long enough to deal with it,
so they stayed outside and became extinct. The other
animals believed Noah and were saved. [Frazer, pp. 328-329]

A flood killed all animals and humans except for two
Shaman, who survived in a boat. They copulated, and their
offspring included the world's first women. [Balikci]

The giant Inugpasugssuk waded into the ocean to hunt
seals. His penis stuck up out of the water so far away that
he thought it was a seal putting its head up, and he struck
it by mistake. He fell backwards in pain, and that raised a
wave that flooded the whole district of Arviligjuaq. [Norman, p. 233]

The world once overturned. Some people were turned into
fiery spirits; all the rest drowned but one. Afterwards,
the survivor smote the ground with his stick, a woman
sprung out, and the two of them repopulated the world.
Proof of the flood is found in the form of sea fossils on
high mountains. [Gaster, p. 120]

Yehl, the Raven, created man, caused the plants to grow,
and set the sun, moon, and stars in their places. Yehl's
wicked uncle had a young wife whom he was very fond and
jealous of. He did not want any of his nephews to inherit
his widow when he died, as Tlingit law dictates should
happen, so he murdered each of Yehl's ten older brothers by
drowning them or, according to some, by stretching them on
a board and beheading them. When Yehl grew to manhood, his
uncle tried to do the same to him. But Yehl's mother had
conceived him by swallowing a round pebble she had found at
low tide, and with another stone she had rendered him
invulnerable. When the uncle tried to behead Yehl, his
knife had no effect. In a rage, the uncle called for a
flood, and a flood came and covered all the mountains. Yehl
assumed his wings, which he could do at will, and soared
into the sky. He remained hanging by his beak from the sky
for ten days, while the water rose so high it lapped his
wings. When the water fell, Yehl let go, dropped like an
arrow onto a soft bank of seaweed, and was rescued by an
otter who brought him to land. [Frazer, pp. 316-317]

Raven had put a woman under the world to govern the
tides. Once he wished to see the undersea world, and he
caused the woman to raise the waters so that he might do so
while remaining dry. He directed her to raise the ocean
slowly so that people might have time to provision their
canoes. As the waters rose, bears and other animals were
driven to the mountaintops, and many of them swam out to
the people's canoes. Some people had taken dogs into their
canoes, and the dogs kept the bears off. Some people landed
on the tops of mountains, building dikes around them to
keep out the water. Uprooted trees, devil-fish, and other
strange creatures washed past. When the waters ebbed, the
survivors followed the tide down the mountain, but the
trees were all gone, and the people, having no firewood,
perished of cold. When Raven returned, he saw fish lying
high on the land, and he commanded them to turn to stone.
When he saw people coming down the mountain, he turned them
to stone also. When all mankind had been destroyed, he
created them anew out of leaves. That is why so many people
die during the autumn. [Frazer, pp.
317-318]

People were saved from a universal deluge in a giant
ark. The ark struck a rock and split in two. The Tlingits
were in one half of the ark, and all other people were in
the other half. This explains why there is a diversity of
languages. [Gaster, p. 119]

Kunyan ("Wise Man"), foreseeing the possibility of a
flood, built a great raft, joining the logs with ropes made
from roots. He told other people, but they laughed at him
and said they'd climb trees in the event of a flood. Then
came a great flood, with water gushing from all sides,
rising higher than the trees and drowning all people but
the Wise Man and his family on his raft. As he floated, he
gathered pairs of all animals and birds he met with. The
earth disappeared under the waters, and for a long time no
one thought to look for it. Then the musk-rat dived into
the water looking for the bottom, but he couldn't find it.
He dived a second time and smelled the earth but didn't
reach it. Next beaver dived. He reappeared unconscious but
holding a little mud. The Wise Man placed the mud on the
water and breathed on it, making it grow. He continued
breathing on it, making it larger and larger. He put a fox
on the island, but it ran around the island in just a day.
Six times the fox ran around the island; by the seventh
time, the land was as large as it was before the flood, and
the animals disembarked, followed by Wise Man with his wife
(who was also his sister) and son. They repeopled the land.
But the flood waters were still too high, and to lower
them, the bittern swallowed them all. Now there was too
little water. Plover, pretending sympathy at the bittern's
swollen stomach, passed his hand over it, but suddenly
scratched it. The waters flowed out into the rivers and
lakes. [Gaster, pp. 117-118]

The deluge was caused by a heavy snowfall one September.
One man foresaw the flood and warned his fellows, but in
vain; the flood covered their intended mountain escape. The
one man survived in a canoe he had built, and he rescued
animals from the waters as he sailed about. In time, he
sent the beaver, otter, muskrat, and arctic duck to dive
into the water in search of earth, but only the duck
succeeded, bringing some slime on its claws. The man spread
the slime on the water and breathed on it to make it grow.
For six days he embarked animals upon the new island; then
the land was large enough for he himself to go ashore. [Gaster, p. 118]

A rich youth and his four nephews sailed far across the
sea to seek the hand of a fair damsel who lived there. But
she would not have him, so he prepared to leave. He and his
nephews were prepared to shove off from shore, and many of
the villagers had come to see them off. One woman with an
infant in her arms said, "If they want a little girl, why
not take this one of mine?" The rich young man heard her,
extended his paddle and told her to put the infant on it,
and placed the infant next to him in the canoe. The girl
whom he had asked to marry came down to get water, but she
began sinking in the mud. As she cried for help, the young
man said it was her own fault, and she soon sank out of
sight. The girl's mother saw this, and to avenge her death
brought some tame brown bears to the water's edge and,
holding their tails, told them to raise a strong wind,
hoping in this way to drown the rich youth. The bears began
furiously digging, raising great waves. The young man's
nephews drowned, as did all inhabitants of the village
except the infant's mother and her husband. The young man,
though, had a magical white stone which, when he threw it
ahead of him, clove a smooth path through the billows. Then
he threw a harpoon at the crest of a wave. When it hit, the
wave became a mountain, and the harpoon rebounded and stuck
in the sky, where medicine-men can see it today. Land had
been formed again, and the youth found himself in a spruce
forest. Turning to the infant, he found that she had become
a radiant woman. He married her and repopulated the drowned
earth. The couple from his wife's village became the
ancestors of the people overseas. [Frazer, pp. 313-314]

A man called the Mariner (Etroetchokren) was the
first person to build a canoe. One day, he rocked it side
to side, causing waves which flooded the earth and
floundering the canoe. He scrambled into a giant hollow
straw that floated past, caulked up the ends, and floated
safely until the flood dried. He landed on a high mountain,
called the Place of the Old Man today, near Fort MacPherson
in the Rockies. The Mariner straddled a rapid stretch of
the Yukon River and, dipping with his hands, drew out dead
bodies of men as they floated past, but he found none
living. The only living thing he saw was a raven high on a
rock, gorged with food and fast asleep. The Mariner climbed
to the raven, grabbed it, and stuck it in his sack. The
raven begged not to be cast down, saying the man would find
no other surviving men without the raven's help. The man
dropped the bag anyway, and the bird was dashed to pieces.
But though the man searched far and wide, he could find
nothing else living except a loach and a pike sunning
themselves on the mud. He went back to the raven,
reassembled its bones, and blew on them to restore the
flesh and return the raven to life. They returned to the
beach, and the raven told the man to bore a hole in the
belly of the pike, while it did the same to the loach. A
crowd of men emerged from the hole in the pike, and women
came out of the loach. [Frazer, pp.
315-316]

A Dogrib and Slave Indian tale is the same as the Cree tale of Wissaketchak, except the old
man is named Tchapewi, and he sends all kinds of amphibious
animals diving for earth before muskrat succeeds. [Frazer, p. 310]

A great flood came; people survived it on rafts and
canoes. Darkness and high winds came, which scattered the
vessels. When the flood subsided, people landed at the
nearest land and lived where they had landed. Thus they
were scattered all over the world, and when they met again
long afterwards, they were different tribes and spoke
different languages. [Gaster, p.
119]

A flood once covered all but the summits of some of the
highest mountains. Its cause isn't certain, but it may have
been made the the three brothers Qoaqlqal, who travelled
the country transforming things until they themselves were
transformed into stones. Three men escaped in a canoe and
drifted to the Nzukeski Mountains, where they and their
canoe were afterwards turned to stone; you may see them
there today. Coyote survived by turning himself into a
piece of wood and floating. When the flood subsided,
leaving him in the Thompson River area, he resumed his
normal shape. He took trees to be his wives, and from them
the Indians are descended. The flood left lakes in the
hollows of the mountains, streams flowing from them, and
fish in them; none of these existed before the flood. [Frazer, p. 322]

The world was flooded, and one man and one woman
survived on a raft on which they collected all kinds of
animals and birds. The man sent a beaver (or, some say, a
muskrat) diving to the bottom, and it brought up a little
mud. The man shaped this to form a new world. It was at
first so small that a little bird could walk around it, but
it grew and grew. [Frazer, pp.
314-315]

A man and his wife went up the hills to hunt marmots.
There, they saw that the water was still rising. They
enclosed their children, along with supplies, in hollow
trees. The water rose further, and all other people
drowned. The children went to sleep, and when they awoke,
one of the boys opened a hole, and they came out, the
waters having had receded. [Roheim,
pp. 159-160]

A strange woman wearing an unusual fur cape came to a
village. One of the boys playing in the area pulled at her
garment and saw her backbone, which had protuberances like
a plant that grows along the seashore. The children jeered
at this. The parents told the children not to laugh, and
the woman sat by the water's edge at low tide. As the tide
rose and touched her feet, she moved up a little and sat
down again. The tide kept rising, following the woman. The
villagers soon became alarmed at its unprecedented height,
and having no canoes, they prepared rafts and provisioned
them with fish and water. At last the tide covered the
whole island. The people saved themselves on the rafts. The
various rafts landed in different places, which is how the
tribes became dispersed. [Erdoes &
Ortiz, pp. 472-473]

Long ago there was a flood which killed all creatures
except a single raven. This raven, Ne-kil-stlas, was a
person who could don and doff his feathers at will; he had
been born of a woman who had had no husband. When the flood
had gone down, he looked about but found no mate, so he
became very lonely. He married a cockle (Cardium
nuttalli) from the beach, and he constantly brooded and
wished for a companion. In time, he heard a faint cry, such
as from a newborn child, from the shell. The cry gradually
grew louder, and at last a small female child appeared. She
grew larger and larger and finally married the raven. From
them all the Indians were produced. [Frazer, p. 319]

The flood was sent by the god Laxha, who had become
annoyed by the noise of boys at play. [Gaster, p. 119]

All people except for a few were destroyed by a flood,
which was sent by heaven to punish man's ill behavior.
Later, people were devastated by fire. The earth had no
mountains or trees before the flood. Leqa created them
after the deluge. [Frazer, p.
319]

Long ago the waters swelled. A few people escaped to the
tops of high mountains, but more were saved in their
canoes. They were scattered and, when the waters went down,
they landed and settled in various spots. Thus Indians are
spread all over the country, but their common songs and
customs show that they are one people. [Frazer, p. 320]

Very long ago, a flood covered everything but three
mountains, one near Bella-Bella, one northeast of there,
and a hill called Ko-Kwus on Don Island which rose with the
flood to stay above the water. Nearly all people floated on
logs and trees in different directions. Some people had
small canoes with anchors and managed to land near their
homes when the water subsided. Of the Hailtzuk only two
men, a woman, and a dog survived. One of the men landed at
Ka-pa, one at another village site, and the woman and dog
at Bella-Bella. The Bella-Bella Indians descended from the
marriage of the woman and dog. There was no fresh water
when the flood subsided. The raven showed people where they
could dig for a little water and how chewing on cedar
brought water into their mouths. This sustained them until
a great rain came which filled the lakes and rivers. It is
still understood, though, that without cedars there would
be no water. [Frazer, p. 321]

A small gray bird, despite the prohibition of her
husband (a chicken hawk, Accipiter cooperi), bathed
in a certain lake after picking berries in the hot sun.
There she was seized and raped by a giant in the lake. The
bird's husband shot the monster, who in revenge swallowed
up all the water to keep others from having it. The woman
pulled out the arrow, and the water rushed forth in a
torrent. The husband and wife escaped to a mountain until
the flood receded. (In variant versions, the woman was
seized by a giant fish or water animal. The husband killed
it, and its blood caused the flood. The husband escaped up
a tree.) [Kelsen, pp. 147-148; Frazer, p. 323]

When the Squamish saw the great flood coming, they held
a council and decided to make a giant canoe. The men worked
day and night to make this canoe, the biggest ever, and the
women made a long rope of oiled cedar fibers with which
they tied the canoe to a giant rock. They put every baby
into the canoe, with food and water. They selected the
bravest young man and the mother of the youngest baby to go
as their guardians. No one cried as the waters rose and
drowned everyone else. After several days, the man saw a
speck far to the south. By the next day, he could see that
it was a mountain top, Mount Baker. He cut the rope and
paddled to it, and made a new home there. The outline of
the canoe can still be seen halfway up the slope of Mount
Baker. [Clark, pp. 42-43]

Masmasalanich, who created man, fastened the earth to
the sun to keep the earth from sinking and to keep the sun
at the proper distance. One day he stretched the rope, so
the earth sank and the water ran over it, eventually
covering even the tops of the mountains. A fierce storm
broke out at the same time. Many people who had taken to
boats were drowned in the storm, and others were driven far
away. At last Masmasalanich shortened the rope, the earth
rose again from the water, and mankind spread over it.
Diversity of language arose from their being scattered;
there was but one speech before the flood. [Frazer, p. 320]

A great rain came, making the rivers and lakes overflow
the country. A man named Ntcinemkin took refuge with his
family in his very large canoe. The others fled to the
mountains, but the flood rose to cover them, too. The
people begged Ntcinemkin to save at least their children.
He didn't have room enough to hold all of them, so he took
one child from each family, alternating males and females.
The flood covered all land except the peak of Split
Mountain (Ncikato) on the west side of Lower
Lillooet Lake. When the waters dropped, the canoe grounded
on Smimelc Mountain. Each stage of the water's dropping is
marked by a terrace on the side of the mountain, which can
be seen today. [Frazer, pp.
321-322]

The ocean rose high enough to cut off the cape. Then it
withdrew, reaching its low ebb four days later, leaving
Neah Bay high and dry. Then it rose again to cover all but
the mountain tops. The rising waters were very warm. People
with canoes loaded their belongings and were borne far to
the north. Many died when their canoes were caught in
trees. The sea returned to normal after four more days, and
the people found themselves far to the north, where their
descendants still live. [Vitaliano, pp. 171-172]

People escaped the great flood in canoes tied by ropes
to the summit of a tall mountain. The top of the mountain
broke off in the flood, leaving two peaks visible in a
ridge in the Olympics. The canoes floated away and came to
rest, after the flood, in the region where Seattle is now.
Their descendants became the natives of that area. [Clark, pp. 44-45]

The Great Spirit, angry with the wickedness of people
and animals, decided to rid the earth of all but the good
animals, one good man, and his family. At the Great
Spirit's direction, the man shot an arrow into a cloud,
then another arrow into that arrow, and so on, making a
rope of arrows from the cloud to the ground. The good
animals and people climbed up. Bad animals and snakes
started to climb up, but the man broke off the rope. Then
the Great Spirit caused many days of rain, flooding up to
the snow line of Takhoma (Mount Ranier). After all the bad
people and animals were drowned, the Great Spirit stopped
the rain, the waters slowly dropped, and the good people
and animals climbed down. To this day there are no snakes
on Takhoma. [Clark, pp. 31-32]

Once a big flood came. People made ropes of twisted
cedar limbs and used them to fasten their canoes to
mountains. The flood covered the Olympic Mountains. Some of
the ropes broke, and the canoes drifted to the country of
the Flatheads. That is why the Skokomish and the Flatheads
speak the same language. [Clark, p.
44]

The Creator made the earth and gave four names for it --
for the sun, waters, soil and forests. He said only a few
people, with special preparation for the knowledge, should
know all four names, or the world would change too
suddenly. After a while, everyone learned the four names.
When people started talking to the trees the change came in
the form of a flood. When the people saw the flood coming,
they made a giant canoe and filled it with five people and
a male and female of all plants and animals. Water covered
everything but the summit of Kobah and Takobah (Mts. Baker
and Ranier). The canoe landed on the prairie. Doquebuth,
the new Creator, was born of a couple from the canoe. He
was told to go to a lake (Lake Campbell) and swim and fast
to get his spirit powers, but he delayed. Finally he did so
after his family deserted him. The Old Creator came to him
in dreams. First he told Doquebuth to wave his blanket over
the water and the forest and name the four names of the
earth; this created food for everyone. Next, at the
direction of the Old Creator, he gathered the bones of the
people who lived before the flood, waved the blanket over
them and named the four names, and made people again. These
people couldn't talk, so he similarly made brains for them
from the soil. Then they spoke many different languages,
and Doquebuth blew them back to the places they lived
before the flood. Someday, another flood will come and
change the world again. [Clark, pp.
139-141]

Thunderbird was once so angry that he sent the ocean
over the land. When it reached the village of the
Quillayute, they got into their canoes. The water rose for
four days, covering the mountains. The boats were scattered
by the wind and waves. Then the water receded for four
days, and people settled in many areas. [Clark, p. 45]

The people became so numerous that they ate all the fish
and game and started to eat each other. They were so wicked
that Dokibatl, the Changer, flooded the earth. All living
things were destroyed except one woman and one dog, which
survived atop Tacobud (Mt. Ranier). From them the next race
of people were born. They walked on four legs and lived
like animals. To make matters worse, a huge and powerful
bear came from the south. It had the power to paralyze with
its gaze whatever it wanted to eat, and it threatened to
eat all the people. The Changer sent a Spirit Man from the
east to teach them civilization. He showed them how to make
and use bows, canoes, clothing, fire, etc., and taught them
about the spirits and the potlatch custom. He killed the
bear with seven arrows, and he put all the ills of the
world in a large building, but years later a curious
daughter peeked in the building and let them out. [Clark, pp. 136-138]

The people were wicked, and to punish them, a flood came
which covered all the land except one mountain. The people
escaped in their canoes to the highest peak in their
country, which they call "Fastener." With long ropes, they
tied their canoes to the tallest tree on the peak, but the
water rose over it. Some of the canoes broke their moorings
and drifted west; those people formed a tribe to the west
which speaks a language like that of the Twanas. Because
those people drifted away, the present Twana tribe is
small. [Frazer, p. 324]

Blue-jay advised a maiden to marry a panther, who was a
hunter and chief of his town. She went to his town but
married Beaver by mistake. When Beaver returned from
fishing, he told her to gather the trout he had caught, but
she discovered they were not trout but willow branches.
Disgusted, she ran away from him and finally married the
panther. Beaver wept for five days, flooding the land with
his tears. The animals escaped to their canoes. When the
flood nearly reached the sky, they thought to fetch up some
earth. They told Blue-jay to dive, but his dive was so
shallow that his tail remained above water. Mink tried
next, and then otter, but they could not reach the bottom.
When muskrat's turn came, he told the people to tie the
canoes together and lay planks across them. Muskrat threw
off his blanket, sang his song five times, and dove. He was
down a long time, but at last flags came up to the surface.
Summer came, the water sank, and the canoes grounded. As
the animals jumped out of the canoes, they broke off their
tails against the gunwale. But otter, mink, muskrat, and
panther reattached their tails, so they have long tails
today. [Frazer, pp. 325-326; Kelsen, p. 148]

A flood overflowed the land. An old man and his family,
on a boat or raft, were blown by the wind to a certain
mountain. He stayed there and sent a crow to search for
land, but it returned without finding any. Later, it
brought back a leaf from a certain grove, and the old man
knew the water was abating. [Frazer,
pp. 324-325]

In early times, many people had gone to war with other
tribes; even medicine men had killed people. But there were
still some good people. One of the good men heard from the
Land Above that a big water was coming. He told the other
good people, and they decided they would make a dugout boat
from the largest cedar they could find. Soon after the
canoe was finished, the flood came, filling the valleys and
covering the mountains. The bad people were drowned; the
good people were saved in the boat. We don't know how long
the flood stayed. The canoe came down where it was built
and can still be seen on the east side of Toppenish Ridge.
The earth will be destroyed by another flood if people do
wrong a second time. [Clark, p.
45]

Twice, a great flood came. Afraid that another might
come, the people made a giant canoe from a big cedar. When
they saw a third flood coming, they put the bravest young
men and fairest young women in the canoe, with plenty of
food. Then the flood, bigger and deeper than the earlier
ones, swallowed the land. It rained for many days and
nights, but when the clouds finally parted for the third
time, the people saw land (Mount Jefferson) and paddled to
it. When the water receded, they made their home at the
base of the mountain. The canoe was turned to stone and can
be seen on Mount Jefferson today. [Clark. pp. 14-15]

In the beginning, there was no land, and Xowalaci (The
Giver) and his companion lived in a sweat house on the
water. One day, white land appeared and expanded on the
waters. Xowalaci made it solid by blowing tobacco smoke on
it. He made more solid land by dropping five mud cakes into
the ocean and telling them to expand when they hit the
bottom. When he stepped on the new land, it became solid.
He looked on the sand of the new land and saw a man's
tracks, seemingly coming from the north and leading into
the water to the south. This worried him, and he told the
water to overflow the land he had created from the mud and
to recede again. But he found more tracks again, coming
from the west, so he caused a second flood. He repeated the
process five times with no different results. Finally he
gave up and said, "This is going to make trouble in the
future!" and there has been trouble in the world since
then. Then Xowalaci tried to make people. He formed figures
from grass and mud, ordered a house to appear, and gave the
figures to his companion to put in the house. Dogs arose
from this creation attempt. He tried again using white
sand, but those figures gave rise to snakes. He attributed
these failures to the footprints. The world became
inhabited by dogs and snakes. He crushed the ten biggest
snakes in baskets of mixed fresh and salt water and threw
them in the ocean. Two bad snakes got away to give rise to
today's snake-like animals. Xowalaci ordered those two to
encircle the world and hold it together. He also crushed
five bad dogs and threw them in a ditch. They gave rise to
water monsters. Soon after, his companion smoked for three
days and created a house from which a woman emerged.
Xowalaci told his companion to be her husband. Xowalaci
straightened out the world, made more animals, and went up
into the sky, saying as he went that the companion, his
wife, and their sixteen children would speak different
languages and become progenitors of the different tribes.
[Sproul, pp. 232-236; von Franz, p. 174]

A great rain came which lasted a long time, and waters
covered the land. The people retreated to high land, but
they were all swept away and drowned except for one pair
who found safety on the highest peak. They lived on fish,
which they cooked by placing them under their arms. They
had no fire, and, as everything was wet, they could not get
any. The waters sank, and all present Indians descended
from that couple. When the Indians died, their spirits took
the forms of various animals and insects, so the earth was
repopulated by animals also. The Indians, still lacking
fire, looked to the moon, whose fire shone brightly. The
Spider Indians and Snake Indians hatched a plan. The Spider
Indians went to the moon in a gossamer balloon, but they
kept the balloon fastened to the earth by a long rope. The
Indians on the moon were suspicious of the newcomers, but
the Spider Indians assured them that they had only come to
gamble. As they played games around the fire, a Snake
Indian climbed up the rope, darted through the fire, and
escaped down the rope again before the Moon Indians could
react. When he reached the earth, he had to travel over
rocks, sticks, and trees, and everything he touched has
henceforth contained fire. The Spider Indians were long
kept prisoners on the moon. When they were finally released
and returned to earth, ungrateful men killed them, fearing
vengeance from the Moon Indians. [Frazer, pp. 289-290]

People came into existence and dwelt a long, long time.
Then one of them dreamed of a whirlwind, and the others
said he had dreamed something bad. After that it blew, and
the wind increased. The world was going bad. At noon they
all went into an earth lodge. It blew terribly. Trees fell
down westward. The one who had dreamed stayed outside and
told the others it was raining, the water was coming, the
earth will be destroyed. All the other houses were blown
away. He came into the earth lodge and leaned against the
pole. At last the pole came loose too. The one who dreamed
was the last destroyed of all the people. The world was
destroyed and water alone was left. After some time,
Olelbes (He-Who-Is-Above) looked down all around and
finally saw something barely visible in the north in the
middle of the water. It swam around a little. It was
lamprey eel, the first to come into existence, and it lay
on the bedrock. On the rocks lay a little mud. No one knows
how long the waters sat there. At last it receded to the
south, turning into numerous creeks. A little earth came
into being, and it turned into all kinds of trees. [Margolin 1981, pp. 128-129]

As the Indians of old lived tranquilly in the Sacramento
Valley, a mighty rushing of waters came suddenly, so that
the whole valley became like an ocean. Many Indians were
overtaken by the waters, and the frogs and the salmon
overtook and ate many others. Only two escaped to the
hills, but the Great Man made them fruitful, so the world
was soon repopulated with many tribes. One man was a chief
of great renown over all the nations. He went to a knoll
overlooking the waters that covered the fertile plains of
his ancestors. For nine sleeps he lay there without food,
meditating on how that water had come there. At the end of
nine sleeps, he was changed so that no arrow could harm
him. He commanded the Great Man to let the waters flow from
the plains. The Great Man opened the side of a mountain,
and the waters flowed away to the ocean. [Frazer, pp. 290-291]

Water covered the world except for the top of the
highest mountain. People escaped to there, but they were
starving. The water went down, leaving the ground a soft
mud. The people rolled down rocks to see if the mud was
hard enough to support them. When the rocks stayed on top
of the mud, the people went down. But the mud was not hard
enough, and the people sank out of sight. Ravens came and
stood at the holes where the people had gone down, one
Raven at each hole. When the ground hardened, the ravens
turned into people. That is why the Miwok are so dark. [Merriam, p. 101]

Wekwek, the Falcon, visited Wennok Lake, a region new to
him, and found many ducks and geese. His grandfather Olle,
Coyote-man, taught him how to make and use a sling. Wekwek
went back to the area, killed hundreds of birds, gathered
them, and brought them back to Olle. The next day, Wekwek
saw Sahte, Weasel-man, coming and going and was curious
about him. Wekwek followed Sahte north to Clear Lake and
found his home while Sahte was out. He found several sacks
of shell-bead money there and took it all back with him.
When Sahte returned, he wanted to find out who stole his
money. He set fire to one end of a stick and pointed it in
different directions. When it pointed south towards the
thief, the flame leaped from the stick and spread
southward. Wekwek was concerned when he saw that the
country to the north was on fire, and he told Olle. Olle
knew the reason for the fire, but he said only, "The people
up there are burning tules." When the fire came close so
that Wekwek thought they would soon burn, he confessed to
Olle that he had stolen the money and hidden it in the
creek. Olle then took a sack from his roundhouse and beat
it against an oak tree, creating fog. He beat another sack
against the tree, causing more fog, and then rain. He said
the rain would last for ten days and nights. The rain
covered all the land except the top of Mount Konokti.
Wekwek flew around in the rain and eventually found that
refuge. On the tenth day, the rain stopped, and the water
started going down. After about a week, the land was bare
again. At that time, there were no real people in the
world. Olle took the feathers of the geese that Wekwek had
killed at Wennok lake. They traveled over the country, and
whenever they found a good site, Olle laid two feathers
side by side. The next morning, each pair of feathers had
turned into a man and a woman. Later, Wekwek commented to
Olle that the people had no fire, and Olle sent Wekewillah,
the Shrew-mice brothers, to steal fire from Kahkahte, the
Crow, who had it at his roundhouse. They succeeded, and
Olle put the fire in the buckeye tree. [Merriam, pp. 138-151]

Oye, Coyote-man, and Wekwek, Falcon-man, quarreled. Oye
took all the people with him across the ocean and made rain
to cover the world with water. Wekwek flew and flew but
could find no place to rest. The water covered everything.
Finally he fell in the water. He was floating nearly dead
when his wing caught on a stick. The stick was from the
roundhouse of Peleet the Grebe, who investigated and found
Wekwek. He pulled Wekwek into his roundhouse and saved him.
Oye let the water down and brought the people back. [Merriam, p. 157]

A fight between the great forces of Good and Evil was
followed by an immense flood. It wiped out all traces of
the previous world and covered all the earth except two
islands. Coyote, the only living thing in the world, stood
on one of the islands (Mount Diablo or Pico Blanco). One
day, he saw a feather floating on the water. It turned into
Eagle as it reached the island. Later, they were joined by
Hummingbird. This trio created a new race of people. Eagle
told Coyote how to find a wife but did not tell him how to
make children. Coyote told the girl to louse him and to
swallow the woodtick she found. She became pregnant from
this. Afraid, she ran away to the ocean and turned into a
sand flea. Coyote found another wife and with her went out
over the world, founding five tribes with five different
languages. [Margolin 1978, pp.
134-135]

The previous world had a sky of sandstone rock. Two
gods, Thunder and Nagaicho, saw that it was old. They
stretched it, propped up its four corners, created flowers,
clouds and other pleasant things. They created a man out of
earth, putting in grass for the stomach and heart, clay for
liver and kidneys, pulverized red stone mixed with water
for blood. They split one of his legs to make a woman. Then
they made the sun and moon. But the creation didn't last.
It rained day and night as people slept. The sky fell.
Humans and animals were all washed away by a flood which
covered everything. There was only water, no wind, rain,
frost, clouds, or sun. It was very dark. Then this earth,
with its long horns, traveled underground from the north;
Nagaicho rode on its head. Where the earth dragon turned
its head upwards, mountain ridges and islands formed. It
lay down in the south; Naigaicho covered it with clay and
plants to create the mountains. People appeared who had
animal names. Later, when the indians came, those people
turned into animals. Naigaicho traveled over the earth
making sea foods, creeks, trees, ocean waves, and generally
making it comfortable for people. When he got to his home
in the north, he and his dog stayed there. [Gifford & Block, pp. 79-82; Erdoes & Ortiz, pp. 107-109]

Coyote encountered an evil water spirit who said, "There
is no wood" and caused water to rise until it covered
Coyote. After the water receded, Coyote shot the water
spirit with a bow and ran away, but the water followed him.
He ran to the top of Mount Shasta; the water followed but
didn't quite reach the top. Coyote made a fire, and all the
other animal people swam to it and found refuge there.
After the water receded, they came down, made new homes,
and became the ancestors of all the animal people today.
[Clark, p. 12]

Coyote dreamed that water would soon cover the world,
but nobody believed him. It rained, and the water started
rising. The people climbed trees because there were no
mountains to escape to. Coyote and a number of people
escaped on a log. With the help of Mole, Coyote created
mountains; then he created people for the new world. [Roheim, p. 153]

One day, the Thunder People found trout in their spring.
At first, the people were afraid of them, but driven by
hunger, the people ate them, except for three children who
were warned by their grandmother not to eat them. The next
morning, all but those three children had been transformed
into deer. The children went to a very high mountain. Rain
came and flooded all but the mountaintop. The children
asked an old man what he could do; he said he didn't know,
but he dug all night while the children slept. In the
morning, he woke the children. The flood was gone, and the
world was beautiful. [Roheim, pp.
153-154]

Everyone but Gopher was killed in a flood. He climbed to
the top of Mt. Kanaktai, and just as the water was about to
wash him off, it receded. He had no fire, so he dug into
the mountain until he found fire inside, thus bringing fire
again to the world. [Roheim, p.
154]

Coyote lived with two little boys whom he had got by
deceit from one of the Wood-duck sisters. Everybody abused
the boys, so Coyote decided to set the world on fire. He
dug a tunnel at the east end of the world, filled it with
fir bark, and lit it. With his two children in a sack, he
called for rescue from the sky. Spider descended and took
Coyote back up through the gates of the sky. When they came
back, everything was roasted. Coyote drank too much water
and got sick. Kusku the medicine man jumped on his belly,
and water flowed out and covered the land. [Roheim, p. 154]

The old woman of the sea, jealous of Eagle's power, came
with her basket in which she carried the sea. She
continually poured out water until it covered the land,
almost to the top of Santa Lucia Peak where the animals
gathered. Eagle borrowed Puma's whiskers, made a lariat
from them, and lassoed the basket. The sea stopped rising,
and the old woman died. Eagle told Dove to fetch up some
mud, and he made the world from it. Eagle shaped the first
people, a woman and two men, from elder-wood. After
sweating in a sweat-house, he blew on them and gave them
life. Then they had a great fiesta. [Sproul, p. 236]

Komashtam'ho caused a great rain and started to flood
out the large dangerous animals, but he was persuaded that
people needed some of the animals for food. He evaporated
the waters with a great fire, turning the land to desert in
the process. [Erdoes & Ortiz, p.
81]

Two brothers fueded, and Hokomata angrily sent a deluge
which destroyed the world. Before it came, though, Tochopa
sealed his daughter Pukeheh in a hollow log. She emerged
when the flood subsided. She bore a son, fathered by the
sun, and a daughter, fathered by a waterfall; these two
repopulated the world. Havasupai women are called
"Daughters of the Water". [Alexander, 1916, p. 180]

A great flood covered the earth and drowned every living
creature except the coyote. He collected tail-feathers of
owls, hawks, eagles, and buzzards and traveled with them
all over the earth. Wherever a wigwam had stood before the
flood, he planted a feather. The feathers sprouted and
flourished, turning into men and women. Thus coyote
repopulated the world. [Frazer, p.
290]

The sky fell and hit the water, causing high breakers
that flooded all the land. That is why one can find shells
and redwood logs on the highest ridges. Two women and two
men jumped into a boat when they saw the water coming, and
they were the only people saved. Sky-Owner gave them a
song, and many days later the water fell when they sang it.
Sky-Owner sent a rainbow to tell them the water would never
cover the world again. [Bell, p.
68]

The Sun, the Moon, and their two children "Old Man" and
"Apistotoki God" began creating the world. They were given
sand, stone, water, and the hide of a fisher with which to
complete the creation. A flood came, and they could save
only those four things. Later, they created an old man, a
dog, a man, and a woman. After a second flood, only those
four were left on earth, and they created the rest of the
world. [von Franz, p. 163]

A man survived the deluge in his canoe. He sent forth a
raven, but it did not return, and in punishment it was
changed from white to black. He next sent out a wood
pigeon; it returned with mud in its claws, by which the man
inferred that the earth had dried, so he landed. [Frazer, p. 297]

Wissaketchak was an old
magician. A certain sea monster hated him and, when the old
man was paddling his canoe, the monster lashed the sea with
its tail, causing waves that flooded the land.
Wissaketchak, though, built a great raft and gathered on it
pairs of all animals and birds. The sea monster continued
its exertions, and the water continued to rise, until even
the highest mountain was covered. Wissaketchak sent a duck
to dive for earth, but the duck could not reach the bottom
and drowned. He then sent the muskrat, which, after a long
time, returned with its throat full of slime. Wissaketchak
moulded this slime into a disk and floated it on the water;
it resembled a nest such as muskrats make on ice. The disk
swelled, and Wissaketchak made it grow more by blowing on
it. As it grew and hardened, he sent the animals onto it.
It became the land we now inhabit. [Frazer, pp. 309-310]

Nenebuc, son of the Sun and a mortal woman, saw some
lions in a great lake. He waited for them to come to shore
to sun themselves, disguising himself by wrapping around
himself some birch bark from a rotten stump. When the lions
came, they were curious about the new stump and sent a
snake to check it out. The snake coiled around it and tried
to upset it, but Nenebuc stood firm. When the lions
themselves approached, Nenebuc wounded the wife of the
chief lion with an arrow shot. She was badly hurt but
escaped to the cave where she lived. (The cave may still be
seen in a bluff west of Smoothwater Lake.) Nenebuc donned
the skin of a toad, disguised himself as a medicine-woman,
and was admitted to the lioness. He thrust the arrow
deeper, killing her. At once, water poured out of the cave,
and the lake began to rise. Nenebuc built a raft, which was
ready no sooner than the flood reached him. As the raft
floated on the flood, Nenebuc took on animals that were
swimming in the waters. After a time, Nenebuc tied a
willow-root rope to the beaver's tail and bade him dive to
find earth below the water, but the beaver returned without
finding a bottom. Seven days later, Nenebuc let the muskrat
try. The muskrat stayed down a long time and came up dead,
but it held a little earth in its claws. Nenebuc dried the
grains from which he remade the land, but not entirely,
which is why there are swampy areas today. [Frazer, pp. 307-308]

The medicine man Wis-kay-tchach recognized all animals
as his relations, and he considered some wolves to be his
brother and two nephews. To stave off starvation one hard
winter, they went hunting and came across the track of a
moose. Wis-kay-tchach and the old wolf stopped to smoke
while the two young wolves hunted the moose, but they
didn't return, so the older two went after them. They found
that the young wolves had eaten all of the moose. Wis made
a fire, and when he had done so, the moose was restored
again, already cut up. The young wolves divided the spoils
into four, but one of them retained the tongue and upper
lip. Wis grumbled, and the young wolves gave the delicacies
to him. They made marrow fat, but soon this was also eaten,
and they began to hunger again. They separated, with Wis
and one young wolf hunting together. The wolf killed some
deer, brought them home in his stomach, disgorged them on
his arrival, and told his uncle that he could catch no
more. Wis spent the night setting enchantments. In the
morning, he told his nephew to go hunting, but warned him
to throw a stick over every valley and hollow place before
jumping over, or some evil would befall him. The wolf,
following a deer, forgot this warning, jumped a hollow, and
fell into a river where he was killed and devoured by water
lynxes. Wis followed when his nephew didn't return. When he
came upon the river, he guessed what had happened, and this
was confirmed when a kingfisher told him it saw the wolf
skin serving as a door mat of the water lynxes. The bird
also told him that the water lynxes often come ashore, and
Wis must turn himself into a stump close by to get his
revenge. In gratitude, Wis began to put a ruff around the
bird's neck, but the bird flew off before Wis could finish,
which is why kingfishers have only part of a ruff at the
back of their head. Wis returned to his camp to prepare;
among other things, he provided a large canoe and in it
embarked all animals that could not swim. He returned to
the area of the lynxes before daybreak, transformed himself
into a stump, and waited. The black one crawled out of the
water, then the gray one. Then the white one, who had
killed the wolf, emerged, but it grew suspicious on seeing
the stump. It sent frogs and snakes to try to pull it down,
but Wis kept himself upright. The lynx, suspicions lulled,
went to sleep. Wis returned to normal shape and, though
warned to shoot the lynx's shadow, forgot and shot its
body. He shot a second arrow at the shadow, wounding the
animal, but the lynx escaped into the river, which then
overflowed and flooded the whole country. Wis escaped in
his canoe and began rescuing the animals which could swim
only a short time. Wis then tied a string around the leg of
a loon and told it to dive for some earth, assuring it that
he could restore it to life if it drowned. When the line
ceased to play out, Wis hauled up the drowned loon, which,
when restored to life, said that it had found no bottom.
Wis next send an otter, then a beaver on the same errand,
with similar results. Finally he send a rat fastened to a
stone, and the rat, when hauled up, had a little earth in
its paws. He dried the earth and blew on it to expand it.
He sent a wolf to explore it, but the wolf soon returned,
saying it was too small. He blew on it a long time, then
sent a crow to explore. The crow didn't return, so Wis
decided the land was big enough and disembarked with all
the animals. [Frazer, pp. 297-301; Roheim, p. 157, Kelsen, p. 147]

Nenebojo went hunting every day while his brother stayed
home. One day, he returned to find his brother missing. His
searching brought him to the shore of a lake, where he saw
a kingfisher looking into the water. The bird would not
tell Nenebojo what it saw until Nenebojo painted its
feathers; then it said it saw Nenebojo's brother, whose
skin the water-spirits were using as a door flap. It also
told where the water-spirits sun themselves. Nenebojo went
there and, using his rod, assumed the shape of a rotten
stump for a disguise. When the lions came out of the water,
they were suspicious of the new stump until one broke off a
piece and saw it was rotten. When they had gone to sleep,
Nenebojo struck them on their heads with his rod. As he did
so, the lake's water rose. He fled; a woodpecker directed
him to a tall pine tree on a mountain. Nenebojo climbed the
tree and began building a raft, which he finished just as
the waters reached his neck. He put pairs of all kinds of
animals on the raft and floated about. After a while, he
sent otter to dive for some earth, but the otter returned
without any. Next, beaver was sent, but in vain. Next he
sent muskrat, who returned with a little sand in its claws
and mouth. He dried the grains and blew them into the water
with the horn he had used to summon the animals. They
formed an island, which Nenebojo enlarged. He sent a raven
to determine its size, but it didn't return. He next sent a
hawk, which reported back that the raven had been eating
dead bodies on the shore, so Nenebojo cursed the raven
never to have anything to eat but what it steals. After
another interval, Nenebojo sent a caribou to explore the
size. It said that the island was still too small, so
Nenebojo grew it once more and finished. [Frazer, pp. 305-306]

Menaboshu regarded all animals as his kin. Once, when
times were bad, he asked the wolves for some food. The food
was so good that he asked to hunt with them, which they
allowed. After ten days of hunting, they reached a
crossroads; the wolves determined to go one way, and
Menaboshu went another, taking with him a little wolf whom
he loved dearly as a brother. They then hunted sometimes
together and sometimes alone. Menaboshu warned the wolf to
stay away from a certain lake, knowing that his worst enemy
the serpent-king lived there. But this warning just made
the wolf curious, and three days later he ventured out on
the ice of the lake. The ice broke under him, and he was
drowned. Menaboshu waited five days for the wolf's return;
then he began wailing, knowing that the serpent-king had
got him. Menaboshu could not get the serpent-king in the
winter, so he came to the lake in the spring. He set up
loud lamentations when he saw the footprints of his lost
brother there. This attracted the attention of the
serpent-king, and when Menaboshu saw it stick up its head,
he immediately turned himself into a tree stump. The
serpent-king and other serpents saw nothing unusual but the
new tree stump. Suspicious of it, the serpent-king sent one
large snake to it. This snake squeezed hard enough to crack
Menaboshu's bones, but he bore the pain stoically. The
snakes then went to sleep on the beach. Menaboshu emerged
from his disguise, grabbed his bow and arrows, and shot
dead the serpent-king and three of its sons. The other
snakes escaped into the water, making much noise and
lashing with their tails. Some snakes scattered the
contents of their medicine bags; the waters began to swell,
and torrents of rain fell from the newly gathered clouds.
In short time, the whole earth was flooded. Menaboshu fled,
hopping from mountain to mountain, but the waves followed
him. He climbed to the top boughs of a fir tree on the top
of one tall mountain, and the waters stopped rising just as
they reached his mouth. Menaboshu stayed there five days
and nights. Finally, he saw a loon swim by, and he asked it
do dive for some earth. The loon did so repeatedly, but
without success. Then Menaboshu saw the body of a drowned
muskrat. He breathed on it to restore it to life and asked
it to dive. The muskrat dived and, though it came up dead,
it had a few grains of earth. Menaboshu dried these and
blew them over the water. Where they landed, they grew into
islands, and these grew together, with Menaboshu's
guidance, into continents. Menaboshu then wandered around
breathing on the corpses of animals to bring them back to
life and otherwise restoring nature and land to its former
beauty. [Frazer, pp. 301-304]

Wenebojo travelled awhile with five wolves. The oldest
wolf became distrustful of Wenebojo and decided they should
leave him, but one wolf, who liked Wenebojo, stayed with
him and hunted food for him, and Wenebojo considered him
his nephew. One night, this wolf didn't return from
hunting. Wenebojo followed his tracks the next day and saw
that he had fallen into a river. The manidog, or
spirits under the water, caused the wolf's death because
there wouldn't be any wild animals left if Wenebojo had his
own way. Wenebojo went to the bank of a lake where the
manidog sometimes come out to sun themselves; he
turned himself into a stump and waited four days. At last,
the manidog came out to bask. A big snake was
suspicious that the stump was Wenebojo, so he went and
squeezed it four times, harder and harder each time, but
Wenebojo withstood it, and the snake said it wasn't
Wenebojo. When all the manidog were asleep, Wenebojo
shot the two kings, wounding them. All the manidog
rushed back into the water. Wenebojo followed the stream
and came across a kingfisher, which said it was waiting for
Wenebojo's nephew's guts to float by. Wenebojo had a string
of beads that had belonged to his nephew, and he offered
them to the bird with the secret intent of strangling it,
but his hand slipped and the bird escaped with the beads,
which is why the kingfisher's head is bushy and it has a
necklace of white spots. Wenebojo went on and met an old
lady carrying basswood bark. He told her he wasn't
Wenebojo, and the old lady told him that they were laying
out basswood to detect Wenebojo, and that she was doctoring
the wounded kings. Wenebojo learned her song and her route;
then he killed her, skinned her, and put on her skin. He
had to shave off his calf muscles to make it fit. With this
disguise, he got entrance into the king's house. He saw his
nephew's skin hanging there, which made him angry. Two
snakes on either side of the door watched him suspiciously,
but he told them his medicine wouldn't work with them
watching. He went to the kings and pushed his arrows
deeper, killing them. He ran out, breaking through basswood
strings in his escape. The manidog saw the basswood
moving and sent water there. Wenebojo heard the water
coming and ran for a hill. Soon the water came to the top
of the hill, and he climbed a tall pine tree there. The
water kept coming, and he told the pine tree to stretch
itself to double its length. It did that four times but
could not stretch more. The water stopped rising just short
of Wenebojo's mouth. Wenebojo had to defecate, and the
feces floated around his mouth. Wenebojo saw an otter and
asked it to dive for some earth. The otter tried, but it
drowned. Wenebojo blew on it, and it came back to life and
told him that it hadn't seen anything. A beaver got farther
but also failed. Next, the muskrat tried. It also floated
up drowned, but Wenebojo found a grain of earth in each of
its paws and in its mouth. He restored the muskrat to life,
dried the grains in the sun, and threw them on the water,
forming a small island. The three animals and Wenebojo went
on the island, and Wenebojo took handfuls of dirt from the
island and threw them around, making it bigger. Other
animals came from the water to the island, too. Wenebojo
asked a caribou to run around the island to test its size.
The caribou soon returned and reported that the land wasn't
big enough yet. Wenebojo threw more dirt far and wide and
sent the caribou off again, but the caribou never came
back. It got tired and stayed in the north. For a long
time, Wenebojo travelled, having forgotten about his anger.
But one day he happened to remember, and he sat crying. He
threatened to pull up the four layers below the earth and
pull down the four layers of the sky to get at the
manidog there. The first manido from below
the earth and the Great Spirit manido from the sky
believed he would do that, and they invited him to meet
with them, but he wouldn't come until they sent a white
otter (seal?) as a messenger. Wenebojo didn't have any
parents, so they created parents for him. The manido
from the bottom formed a clay figure, shook his rattle and
talked, and the figure came to life. It was an Indian
woman. The Great Spirit put the last rib from the woman
into a clay figure and likewise created a man. The
manidog also told Wenebojo about the Medicine Dance.
The people were meant to live forever, but Wenebojo's
brother Nekajiwegizik hadn't been invited. He was the first
person to die, and he decreed that everyone who lived on
earth would have to follow his road to the other world. [Barnouw, pp. 33-45]

For a time, Wenebojo travelled with a pack of wolves
which he considered his nephews. When they parted, one of
the wolves stayed with him and hunted for him. Wenebojo had
a dream that the manidog, evil underwater spirits
who were jealous of him, would kill his nephew, so he told
his nephew not to cross any streams. But the wolf tried to
jump a stream while hunting and was captured and killed.
Wenebojo knew what happened. He followed a river to a lake
and found a kingfisher in a tree looking into the water,
waiting for some of Wenebojo's nephew's guts to float by.
Wenebojo offered it a string of beads if it would tell him
what it knew. The bird described how the manidog sun
themselves. Wenebojo intended to wring the bird's neck as
he put on the beads, but the bird slipped away. That is why
the kingfisher has ruffled feathers around its neck.
Wenebojo prepared two arrows by rubbing them on the lips of
women having their first menses. Then he turned himself to
a stump by the lake and waited for the manidog to
sun themselves. When they emerged, the king was suspicious
of the stump and had a snake squeeze it and a bear claw it,
but Wenebojo withstood these attacks. Wenebojo wished the
manidog would go to sleep, and when they slept, he
shot and wounded the king and the next to the king; then he
ran away as the water was rising behind him. Woodchuck
saved him by digging a shelter, which they stayed in two
days until the water receded. Later, Wenebojo encountered
an old woman carrying basswood bark. He assured her that he
was not Wenebojo, and she told him that the bark would be
used to detect Wenebojo when he touched it, that she was
treating the wounded manidog, and that only she had
eaten his nephew. With that, he killed her, put on her
clothes, and wished himself to look like her. He went to
the wigwam of the wounded manidog and killed them.
As he ran away, he heard a roar of water behind him. He ran
to a bluff; a pine tree there told Wenebojo to climb it,
and the tree stretched higher, saving Wenebojo from the
flood with his nose barely above water. Wenebojo asked loon
to dive down to get some dirt, but the loon died in the
attempt. Otter and beaver failed similarly. Muskrat,
however, was able to get a few grains of dirt before he
passed out. Wenebojo used this dirt to recreate land. He
told a big bird to fly around it; the land would grow as it
did so. When the bird returned in four days, he sent an
eagle out to grow the land larger. Wenebojo cut up the body
of the king manido and made a lake of fat from it.
The animals that ate or touched it acquired fat in their
bodies. [Barnouw, pp. 63-69]

The evil serpent Meshekenabek carried off Manobozho's
cousin into a deep lake. Manobozho caused the sun to shine
fiercely on the lake to drive out Meshekenabek and his
companions. When they emerged, Manobozho shot an arrow into
the serpent's heart. The serpent, in his dying rage,
stirred up the waters of the lake and spread waves over the
land. Fleeing, Manobozho warned the Indians also to retreat
to a mountain top. The waters still rose, though, and
Manobozho made a raft for them to take refuge on. However,
Manobozho couldn't disperse the flood without some earth to
use as a nucleus. Muskrat finally succeeded in diving for
some dirt, and Manobozho used it to make the waters recede.
[Howey, pp. 291-293]

In the beginning of time, in September, there was a
great snow. A mouse nibbled a hole in the leather bag which
contained the sun's heat, and the heat escaped and melted
all the snow in an instant. The waters rose to cover even
the highest mountains. One old man had foreseen the flood
and warned everybody, but the others had thought to escape
to the hills; they drowned in the flood. The old man had
prepared a canoe and survived, rescuing animals he came
across. After a while he sent, in turn, the beaver, otter,
muskrat, and duck to find land. Only the duck returned,
with some mud in its bill. The old man cast the mud on the
water and blew on it, making solid land. [Vitaliano, p. 170]

Manabush wanted to punish the evil manidoes, the Ana
maqkiu who had killed his brother Wolf. He invented the
ball game and asked the Thunderers to play against the Ana
maqkiu, who appeared from the ground as bears. After the
first day of play, Manabush made himself into a pine tree
near where the manidoes played. When they returned the next
morning, the manidoes were suspicious of the tree, so the
sent for Grizzly Bear to claw it and Serpent to strangle
and bite it. Manabush withstood these attacks, allaying
their suspicion. When the ball play took everyone else far
away, Manabush shot and wounded the two Bear chiefs with
arrows and then ran away. The underground Ana maqkiu soon
came back, saw the wounded Bear chiefs, and called for a
flood from the earth. Badger hid Manabush in the earth, so
the Ana maqkiu gave up the search just as the water was
starting to fill Badger's burrow. The underground people
took their chiefs to a wigwam and sent for an old woman to
heal them. Manabush followed, took the old woman's skin and
disguised himself in it. He entered the wigwam, killed the
two chiefs, and took the bear skins. The Ana maqkiu at once
pursued; water poured out of the earth in many places.
Manabush climbed a great pine tree on the highest mountain.
When the waters still rose to threaten him, he commanded
the tree to grow. This he did four times, but the waters
still rose. He called to Kisha Manido for help, who
commanded the waters to stop. Seeing water everywhere,
Manabush called to Otter to dive down and bring up some
earth. Otter tried but drowned before reaching bottom. Mink
failed similarly. Then Manabush called on Muskrat, who also
returned drowned but had some mud in his paw. Manabush blew
on Muskrat to return him to life. Then he took the earth,
rubbed it between his hands, and threw it on the water,
thus creating a new earth. Manabush told Muskrat that his
tribe would always be numerous. He gave the skin of the
Gray Bear chief to Badger and kept the skin of the White
Bear chief. [Judson, p. 21-25]

The Great Spirit created three kinds of men: red men,
white men with hairy heads, and hairy men with hair all
over their body. The hairy men went to the barren south and
eventually dwindled in numbers and disappeared. The red men
went south after the Great Spirit taught them culture. They
went north again when the Great Medicine told them the
south would be flooded. In the north, they found that the
white men had gone and they could no longer talk to the
animals, though they could still control them. Later, they
went south again, but another flood came and scattered
them, and they never came together again. They traveled in
small bands to the north, but they found it barren, so they
returned south and lived the best they could. One
particularly hard winter had earthquakes, volcanoes, and
floods which destroyed all the trees. The people spent the
long winter in caves and were almost famished the following
spring. The Great Medicine, in pity, gave them corn and
buffalo. Since then, there have been no more famines or
floods. [Erdoes & Ortiz, pp.
112-113]

People came who hunted for sport, burned and cleared
forests, and didn't think of the animals as their brothers.
The Great Spirit was sad and let the people's smoke from
their fires lie in the valleys. The people coughed and
choked but continued their evil ways. The Great Spirit sent
rains to extinguish the fires and destroy the people. The
people moved to the hills as the waters rose. Spotted Bear,
the medicine man, said they would be safe as long as they
had buffalo, but there were no buffalo around. The young
men went hunting for buffalo, revising their treatment of
nature as they went. The waters rose, and people climbed to
the mountains. Finally, two men came back with the hide of
a white bull buffalo which had tried to climb to the
mountains but had drowned in the floodwaters, though a cow
and young buffalo survived. Spotted Bear announced that,
since the people were no longer destroying the world, that
buffalo would save those who were left. With help from
other medicine men, he scraped and stretched the hide,
stretching it over the whole village. Each day the wet hide
stretched farther, until it covered all of Yellowstone
Valley. Rain no longer fell in the valley, and people and
animals moved back there. The hide began to sag, but
Spotted Bear raised the west end to catch the West Wind,
which made the skin a dome over the valley. The Great
Spirit, seeing that people were living at peace with the
earth, stopped the rain. The sun shone on the hide,
shrinking it until all that was left was a rainbow arch.
[Edmonds & Clark, pp. 17-19]

Messou was hunting with his dogs, when his dogs got
caught in a large lake. He couldn't find them until a bird
told him that it had seen the lost dogs in the lake. Messou
entered the lake to rescue them, but the lake overflowed,
covered the land, and destroyed the world. Messou sent
first a raven and then an otter to find a piece of earth,
but neither could find any. He next sent down a muskrat,
which dived and returned with just a tiny amount of land,
but enough for Messou to form the land we are on. Messou
fired arrows into the trunks of trees, and the arrows
turned into branches. He took revenge on those who had
detained his dogs. He married the muskrat and by it peopled
the world. [Brinton, p. 225]

Being angry with giants, God commanded a man to build a
large canoe. The man did so, and when he embarked, the
water rose till no land was visible anywhere. Weary of
seeing nothing but water, the man threw an otter into it.
The otter dived and brought up a little mud, which the man
breathed on and caused to expand. He placed the earth on
the water and prevented it from sinking. After awhile, he
placed reindeer on the new island, but they completed a
circuit of the island quickly, so he concluded it wasn't
yet large enough. He continued to blow on it and grow it so
the mountains, lakes, and rivers were formed; then he
disembarked. [Gaster, p. 117]

Kuloscap (Glooscap) defeated the cruel Ice Giant
magicians at various contests. Then he stomped on the
ground, and foaming water rushed down from the mountains.
He sang a song which changed how everyone looks, and the
Ice Giants became large fish and were washed to sea. Those
fish carry markings like the wampum collars of the
magicians. [Norman, p. 115; Leland, p. 126]

Long ago, when men had become evil, the Strong Serpent
Maskanako came. He was the foe of people, and they
became embroiled, hating and fighting each other. The small
men (Mattapewi) fought with Nihanlowit,
keeper of the dead. The Strong Serpent resolved to destroy
all men, and the Black Serpent brought the snake-water
rushing, spreading everywhere, destroying everything. Then
the waters ran off, and the great evil went away by the
path of the cave. [Kelsen, pp.
146-147]

A deluge covered the whole earth. A few people survived
on the back of a turtle which was so old its shell was
mossy. A loon flew by, and the people begged it to dive and
bring up some land. The bird dived but could not reach the
bottom. Then he flew far away, came back with some earth in
his bill, and led the turtle back to some dry land. There
the people settled and repopulated the country. Those saved
by the turtle became the Turtle Clan. [Frazer, p. 295; Bierhorst, 1995, pp. 30, 43]

After the Great Spirit created the earth, he flooded it.
He sent various animals diving for earth. At last the
muskrat succeeded. He put the earth on the turtles back,
and it increased in size. [Bierhorst, 1995, p. 44]

Day after day, a dog stood at the river bank and howled
piteously. Rebuked by his master, the dog said a flood was
coming, and he must build and provision a boat.
Furthermore, the dog said, he must throw him, the dog, into
the water. For a sign that he spoke the truth, the dog
showed the back of his neck, which was raw and bare with
flesh and bone showing. The man followed directions, and he
and his family survived; from them, the present population
is descended. [Gaster, pp.
116-117]

The earth is a large tortoise. Once a tribe, digging for
badgers, dug deep into the earth and cut through the shell
of Tortoise. Tortoise began to sink, and water rose through
the knife cut. The water covered all the ground and drowned
all the people except one man, Nu-mohk-muck-a-nah, who
escaped in a large canoe to a mountain in the west. Today,
a plank structure called the "big canoe" stands in the
central plaza of a Mandan village. The Mandans celebrate
the subsidence of the flood every year with a ceremony
called Mee-nee-ro-ka-ha-sha, held when willow leaves
are fully grown because the twig that the turtle-dove
brought home had such leaves. In the ceremony, a man
representing the survivor collects edged tools from each
household; these are later thrown into a deep pool. If this
sacrifice is not made, the man says, another flood will
come and destroy everyone. [Judson,
p. 20; Frazer, pp. 292-294]

In the world before this one, the people didn't know how
to behave or how to act human, and the creating power was
displeased. He placed three dry buffalo chips under a
sacred pipe rack and saved a fourth for lighting the pipe.
He sang three songs to bring rain, which caused the rivers
to overflow; then he sang a fourth song and stamped on the
earth. The earth split open, and water flowed from the
cracks and covered everything. The Creating Power floated
on the sacred pipe and his huge pipe bag. All people and
animals were destroyed except Kangi, the crow. It was very
tired and three times asked the Creating Power to make a
place for it to rest. The Creating Power opened his pipe
bag, which contained all manner of animals and birds, and
selected four known for their diving abilities. He sang a
song and commanded the loon to dive and bring up mud, but
the loon failed. Likewise, the water was too deep for otter
and beaver. But the turtle succeeded in bringing up a
little mud. The Creating Power took the mud and, singing,
spread it out on the water. After the fourth song, there
was enough land for himself and the crow. He waved two long
eagle feathers over the ground, and it spread until it
replaced the water. He named it the Turtle Continent. The
Creating Power thought, "Land without water is not good,"
and wept for the earth and the creatures he would put upon
it. His tears became oceans, streams, and lakes. He
scattered the animals across the land; they came to life
when he stamped on the ground. He created four colors of
people from red, white, black, and yellow earth. He created
the rainbow as a sign that there would be no more great
flood, but warned that he had destroyed the first world by
fire because it was bad, and the second world by flood, and
he would destroy this world too if people make it bad and
ugly. [Erdoes & Ortiz, pp.
496-499]

Unktehi, a water monster, fought the people and caused a
great flood. The people retreated to a hill, but the water
swept over them, killing them all. The blood gelled and
turned to pipestone. (Pipes made from that rock are sacred
today.) Unktehi was also turned to stone; her bones are in
the Badlands now, forming a long ridge. A giant eagle,
Wanblee Galeshka, swept down, saved one girl from the
flood, carrying her to a tree on the highest pinnacle, the
only place not covered by water. He made her his wife. She
bore twins, a boy and a girl, which are the ancestors of
the Sioux. [Erdoes & Ortiz, pp.
93-95]

Unktehi puffed up her body to make the Missouri
overflow, and the little water monsters, her children, did
the same with other streams and lakes. This caused a great
flood which covered the country. Only a few people escaped
to the highest mountain, and the waves threatened to kill
them. The thunderbirds liked people, so they fought the
water monsters for several years. In time, it became clear
that the thunderbirds were losing when they fought close,
so they retreated to the sky and, all together, sent their
lightning bolts. This burned the forests, boiled the water,
and turned the earth red hot, except where the people had
taken refuge. Unktehi and the water monsters were defeated.
Their bones can still be seen in the Badlands. [Erdoes & Ortiz, pp. 220-222]

A prophet was sent by the high god to warn of a coming
flood, but nobody took notice. When the flood came, the
prophet took to a raft. After several months, he saw a
black bird. He signaled it, but it just cawed and flew
away. Later, he sighted and signaled a bluish bird. The
bird flapped, moaned dolorously, and guided the raft
towards where the sun was breaking through. Next morning,
he landed on an island with all kinds of animals. He cursed
the black bird (a crow) and blessed the bluish one (a
dove). [Gaster, p. 116]

A great rain fell so abundantly that it extinguished all
fires and caused a flood which drowned all but a few people
who saved themselves on a high mountain. A little bird
named Coüy-oüy (a cardinal) brought fire from
heaven again. [Gaster, p. 116]

Long ago, a great storm came. The people baked a great
earthen pot, in which two people saved themselves. Since
rattlesnakes were then the friends of man, two rattlesnakes
were saved in the pot, too. The red-headed woodpecker clung
to the sky, but the waters rose so high they wet and marked
his tail. When the waters sank, the woodpecker was sent to
find land, but he could find none. The dove was sent next
and came back with a grain of sand. When this grain was
placed on the water, it spread out and became dry land. [Judson, p. 19]

When the earth was first made, all was under water. The
Creator sent Crawfish to bring up a little earth. The mud
he brought up spread out, and dry earth appeared. [Judson, p. 5]

A woman gave birth to four monsters. Though advised to
kill them, she let them grow. They grew quickly and acted
evilly, and before long they were too large and powerful to
kill. They kept growing. One night they came together in
the camp with their backs together and grew together into
one creature, which grew tall enough to touch the sky. Most
people took refuge at their base, where they couldn't bend
over and reach them; others were caught by the monsters'
long arms and eaten. One man who could see the future heard
a voice telling him to plant a hollow reed. He did so, and
it quickly grew very big. The voice directed the man and
his wife to go naked into the reed, taking pairs of good
animals, when they see all the birds of the world flying
south. The sign came and they entered. Rain came, and
waters rose to cover everything but the top of the reed and
the heads of the monsters. Turtle destroyed the monsters by
digging under them and uprooting them. They broke apart and
fell in (and thus formed) the four cardinal directions. The
waters subsided, and winds dried the earth. The people and
animals emerged onto a barren earth, and the wife wondered
how they would live. The man said, "Go to sleep." Four
times they slept, and each time they woke there was more
growth around them. After the fourth night, they awoke in a
grass hut, and there was a stalk of corn outside. The voice
told them corn was to be their holy food. If they plant
corn and something else comes up, then the world will end.
The voice didn't return after that. [Erdoes & Ortiz, p. 120-122]

The first people on the earth were giants, very big and
strong. They did not believe in the creator Ti-ra-wa. They
thought nothing could overcome them. They grew increasingly
worse. At last Ti-ra-wa grew angry and raised the water to
the level of the land so that the ground became soft. The
giants sank into the mud and drowned. Their bones can still
be found today. Ti-ra-wa then created a man and woman, like
people of today, and gave them corn. The Pawnees are
descended from them. [Grinnell, pp.
355-356]

The first world, where Navajos originated, was inhabited
by Insect People of twelve types. For their sins of
adultery and constant quarreling, the gods expelled them by
sending a wall of water from all directions. The Insect
People flew up into the second world, guided through a hole
in the sky by a cliff swallow. The second world was a
barren world inhabited by Swallow People. They decided to
stay anyway, but after 24 days, one of the Insect People
made love to the wife of the Swallow People's chief. They
were expelled to the third world; the white face of the
wind told them of an opening. The third world was a barren
world of Grasshopper People. Again, the Insect People were
expelled for philandering after 24 days. The red face of
the wind guided them to the hole to the fourth world. This
world was inhabited by animals and Pueblos, with whom the
Insect People coexisted peacefully. The gods made people in
human form from ears of corn, different colors of corn
becoming different tribes. The Insect People intermarried
with them, and their descendants eventually looked fully
human. In time, the men and women argued and decided to
live apart. But both groups engaged in unnatural sex acts,
and eventually the women were starving, so they got back
together. The gods were displeased by their sins, though,
and sent a wall of water upon them. The people noticed
animals running and sent cicadas to investigate. They
escaped the floodwaters by climbing into a fast-growing
reed. Cicada dug an entrance into the fifth world, which
was inhabited by grebes. The grebes said that people could
have that world if they could survive plunging arrows into
their heart. The cicadas met this challenge (they bear the
scars on their sides still), and people live in the fifth
world today. [Capinera, pp.
226-228]

Before the Apaches emerged from the underworld, there
were other people on the earth. Dios told an old man and
old woman that it would rain forty days and nights. People
were warned to go to the tops of four mountains
(Tsisnatcin, Tsabidzilhi, Becdilhgai, and another whose
identity isn't known), and not to look at the flood or sky.
The people didn't believe the old couple. When the rains
came, only a few people made it to the mountain tops and
shut their eyes. Those who looked at the flood turned into
a fish or frog (as did some who were caught in the flood);
if they looked at the sky, they turned into a bird. The
people sitting on the mountains were told, when they got
hungry, to think of food, and Dios would feed them. After
eighty days, Dios told the 24 people remaining to open
their eyes and come down. These 24 people went into 24
mountains. Eight other people survived the flood who were
able to travel by looking where they wanted to go, and they
were there. These people told the Apaches about the flood
before going into two mountains themselves. Dios told them
to stay there until the world is destroyed. Around the year
2000, when the Apaches dwindle in number, the surface of
the earth will again be destroyed, this time by fire. [Opler, pp. 111-113]

When people still lived in the underworld, the chief,
after an argument with his mother-in-law, decided that men
and women should live apart for awhile, so the men all
moved to the other side of a river, and the chief prayed to
Kogulhtsude (a water spirit) to widen the river. They lived
four years like this. The women's farms became less and
less productive, and they began to go hungry. The men
wanted sexual satisfaction and began some sexual
perversions; the older girls, likewise affected, began to
masturbate with elk horns, eagle feathers, and other
things. These things impregnated them and produced the
monsters that afterwards killed men. About that time,
Coyote found a baby in a whirlpool in the river and took it
out to raise himself. But the baby was Kogulhtsude's child,
and he sent water out to draw it back. Some people were
drowned and turned into frogs and fish; the other men and
women escaped together to a tall mountain. Coyote used his
magic to make the mountain grow, but the waters kept
rising, finally overflowing onto this world. The people
suspected Coyote was causing the trouble and found the baby
hidden under his coat. They threw the baby (which was
almost dead from drying) into the water, and the water
receded. The people went down into the underworld again.
When they later emerged, the surface of the earth was
covered with water from that flood. The four Holy Ones made
black, blue, yellow, and glittering hoops and threw them in
each compass direction, and the water receded. They
commanded the four winds to dry the land further. [Opler, p. 20, 265-268]

As the waters rose, a chief led his warriors into the
Superstition Mountains in Arizona. When it became clear
that even the mountain peaks would be submerged, the chief
told his braves that, rather than let them drown
ignominiously, he would turn then to stone. They are there
guarding the heights even today. [Vitaliano, p. 170]

Sussistinnako (Spider), the first being, lived in the
lower world. He drew a cross and placed magic parcels at
the east and west points, and his song brought forth from
them two women, Utset, the mother of all Indians, and
Nowutset, the mother of all other races. Spider also
created rain, thunder, lightning, and rainbow, and the
women made the sun, moon, and stars. Nowutset was the
stronger but duller of the two women, and she lost a
contest of rules. Utset slew her and cut out her heart;
thus began war in the world. People lived happily in the
lower world for eight years, but in the ninth, a flood
came. The people ascended through a reed, with Utset
leading the way. Badger and locust bored the passage
through the lower world's sky. Turkey was the last to
ascend, and the foaming flood waters touched his tail and
left their mark there to this day. Beetle was put in charge
of the sack full of stars, but out of curiosity he made a
hole in it, and the stars scattered across the heavens.
Utset managed to rescue a few with which she made
constellations. The hole through which the people emerged
is called the Shipapo. The first people, the Sia, camped
around it. They had no food, but Utset had always known the
name of corn, and she created it out of bits of her heart.
[Alexander, 1916, p. 203]

The descendants of Captain Ouiot asked Chinigchinich for
vengeance upon their chief. Chinigchinich appeared to them
and told them that those of them with the power to cause
rain were the once to achieve vengeance by inundating the
earth and so destroying every living thing. The rains came;
the sea swelled in over the earth, covering all the land
except a high mountain, where a few people had gone with
the person who caused the rain with songs of supplication
to Chinigchinich to drown their enemies. Every other animal
on earth was destroyed. If their enemies heard them, they
sang other songs saying that they were not afraid because
Chinigchinich will not destroy the world with another
inundation. [Frazer, p. 288]

A great flood covered high mountains and drowned most
people. A few saved themselves on a knoll called Mora by
the Spaniards and Katuta by the Indians, staying there
until the flood went down. The hill still has stones,
ashes, and heaps of seashells showing where the Indians
cooked their food. [Gaster, pp.
115-116]

After the earth had become peopled, the great eagle told
a seer in the Gila valley, on three occasions, to warn the
people about a great flood that would soon come, but the
seer ridiculed him and ignored his warnings. Scarcely had
the bird gone for the third time when a tremendous clap of
thunder was heard. When morning came, the earth trembled,
and a great green wall of water roared down the valley and
destroyed everything in it. Szeukha, son of Chiowotmahke
(Earth maker), saved himself by floating on a ball of pine
resin. When the water receded somewhat, he landed on a
mountain above the Salt River; his cave and tools can still
be seen there. Szeukha made a ladder that reached into the
clouds and went to fight the great eagle, whom he thought
had caused the flood. They fought long, but at last he
killed the eagle. He found the bones and corpses of the
people which the eagle had abducted and returned them to
life. He also rescued a pregnant woman and her child. The
eagle had stolen her and taken her for his wife. She became
the mother of the Pima people. [Erdoes
& Ortiz, pp. 473-475; Gaster,
p. 115]

The Creator, Earth Doctor, made the mountains, the
waters, the plants; he made the sun and moon in their
courses. Then he made all kinds of birds and creeping
things, and he made clay images and commanded them to
become living humans. They obeyed him, multiplied, and
spread over the earth. In time, as sickness and death were
still unknown, the population outran the available
sustenance, and people faced ever-increasing famine. The
Creator resolved to destroy the creatures he had made, so
he pulled down the sky, crushing to death all living
things. Then he restored the world and made humans again.
The earth gave birth to one known as Siuuhû or Elder
Brother. He spoke harshly to the Creator, and the Creator
feared him. Elder Brother shortened people's lives so that
they didn't multiply out of control as before. He resolved
further to destroy mankind entirely with a great flood. He
created a handsome youth to go among the Pimas, wed their
women, and beget children, staying with each wife only
until his first child was born. The first wife gave birth
four months after marriage and conception, and the
gestation periods became shorter with each successive wife,
until the last child was born at the time of the marriage.
(The people were amazed and frightened by the powers shown
by Elder Brother and his agent during these years.) This
last child's screams shook the earth, and it was he who
caused the flood. Meanwhile, Elder Brother had begun
fashioning, out of black gum, a jar in which to save
himself, and he announced his purpose to the Creator. The
Creator called the people together and warned them of the
nearing flood. He thrust his staff into the ground, boring
a hole all the way through the earth. Some people took
refuge in the hole. Other people appealed, futilely, to
Elder Brother. Elder Brother did tell coyote to find a big
log on which to float safely on the flood. Elder Brother
closed himself in the jar, known as Black House, and the
flood came. The jar bobbed on the waters until it came to
rest near the mouth of the Colorado River. It may be seen
there today; it is called Black Mountain. The Creator
survived the flood by enclosing himself in his reed staff
and floating. The coyote survived on his driftwood. Only
five sorts of birds survived, including the flicker and
vulture, by clinging to the sky with their beaks until a
god took pity on them and let them make nests from their
own down and float in them. Some people survived in the
hole which the Creator had made. Others survived in a
similar hole made by a powerful person called South Doctor.
Others appealed to the Creator, who told them to try to
find refuge on Crooked Mountain, and he directed South
Doctor to help them. South Doctor led the people to the
summit and, with his enchantments, four times raised the
mountain and arrested the rising waters, but then his
powers were exhausted. He threw his staff into the water,
where it cracked loudly. He sent a dog to see how high the
tide had risen, and when the dog reported that the water
was very near the top, the people were transformed into
stone. You may see them there today. [Frazer, pp. 283-287]

Because someone displeased the gods, a heavy rain began
pouring down, and water gushed from the broken ground,
swelling the rivers. For the first time, the wise Se-eh-ha
(Elder Brother) did not know what to do. Some people ran up
Slanting Mountain (Superstition Mountain) and prayed to the
Great Spirit to stop the flood, but when the water
threatened to swallow them up, they turned into rocks in
fright. Se-eh-ha and his brother Juvet-Makai (Earth
Medicine Man) hurriedly made canoes and rode out the flood
in them. Coyote used his magic to turn himself small and
crawl into his bamboo flute, in which he floated. Some
birds, including the swallow, buzzard, raven, oriole, and
hummingbird, clung to the sky with their bills. The flood
rose high enough to drench their tails, leaving them
drenched-looking for all time. The flood lasted four days,
and Se-eh-ha, Juvet-Makai, and Coyote were tossed in
different directions. Coyote landed on a high mountain near
the Colorado River; his flute was tightly stuck in the
rocks, so he left it there. He left to look for Se-eh-ha
and Juvet-Makai, finding them at Slanting Mountain
surveying the desolated land. Elder Brother rubbed some
dust off his chest onto the ground, where it turned into
ants. The ants began scattering the dirt, making it drier,
and Elder Brother said that is what he wants ants to do.
The three of them began making images to replace the lost
people. Elder Brother scolded Earth Medicine Man for making
his images so different, with one leg and one arm, and
Earth Medicine Man angrily threw away his images and sank
into the ground to find a place to live on the other side
of the earth. Elder Brother and Coyote placed their images
in a warm mud hut and waited for them to speak. Coyote's
images began laughing first; this displeased Elder Brother,
so he sprinkled cold water on them and threw them to the
cold north, where they became the Apaches. Coyote was
angered and disappeared as Earth Medicine Man had. After
four days, Elder Brother's images began laughing and
talking. They became the River People and repopulated the
Gila valley. (Later, Elder Brother became greedy and evil
and led Juvet-Makai's people to conquer the River People.)
[Shaw, pp. 1-14]

Back when the sun was closer to the earth, Coyote
foresaw the coming of a flood, gnawed down a great tree,
entered it, and sealed the opening. Montezuma, who was the
first person created by the Great Mystery, took warning
from Coyote and prepared a dugout canoe for himself atop
Monte Rosa. Only they survived the flood, which covered all
the land. They met again on the top of Monte Rosa, which
rose above the flood waters. To ascertain how much dry land
was left, the man sent Coyote to explore. Coyote reported
that there was sea to the west, south, and east, but
seemingly endless land to the north. The Great Spirit, with
the help of Montezuma, restocked the earth with men and
animals. Montezuma, with Coyote's help, taught them and led
them. Montezuma later became prideful and rebelled against
the Great Mystery, thus bringing evil into the world. The
Great Mystery raised the sun to its present height and,
with an earthquake, destroyed the tower that Montezuma was
building into the heavens, in the process changing
languages so that people could no longer understand animals
or other tribes. [Erdoes & Ortiz,
p. 487-489; Gaster, pp. 114-115]

The people repeatedly became distant from Sotuknang, the
creator. Twice he destroyed the world (by fire and by cold)
and recreated it while the few people who still lived by
the laws of creation took shelter underground with the
ants. When people became corrupt and warlike a third time,
Sotuknang guided the ones who had retained their wisdom to
Spider Woman, who cut down giant reeds and sheltered the
people in the hollow stems with a little water and food.
Sotuknang caused a great flood with rain and waves, and the
people floated in their reeds for a long time. Finally,
they came to rest on a small piece of land, and Spider
Woman unsealed their reeds and pulled them out by the tops
of their heads. They still had as much food as they started
with. They sent out birds to find more land, but to no
avail. They grew a tall reed and climbed it, but they saw
only water. But guided by their inner wisdom (which comes
from Sotuknang through the door at the top of their head),
the people traveled on, using the reeds as canoes. They
went northeast, finding progressively larger islands. The
last of these was large and fruitful, and people wanted to
stay there, but Spider Woman urged them on. They went
further northeast, paddling hard as if going uphill, until
they came to the Fourth World. The shores were rocky with
seemingly no place to land, but by opening the doors at the
tops of their head, they found a current that took them to
a sandy beach. Sotuknang appeared and told them to look
back, and they saw the islands, the last remnants of the
Third World, sink into the ocean. [Waters, pp. 12-20]

Spider Clan, Blue Flute Clan, Fire Clan, Snake Clan, and
Sun Clan traveled together on the Hopi migrations. On their
northward journey, they were blocked at the Arctic Circle
by a mountain of ice and snow. This was the Back Door of
the Fourth World, which Sotuknang said was closed to them.
Spider Woman and the Spider Clan, however, urged them to go
on, and all the clans used their powers to try to melt and
bread down the mountain. They tried four times but failed.
Sotuknang told Spider Woman that if they had succeeded, the
melted snow and ice would have flooded the world. He
punished her by letting her grow old and ugly, and Spider
Clan became breeders of wickedness. [Waters, pp. 39-40]

A great flood once forced the Zunis out of their valley
to take refuge on a nearby tableland. But the flood rose
nearly to the top of the tableland, and the people, fearing
it would drown them all, decided to offer a human sacrifice
to appease the angry waters. A youth and maiden, children
of two Priests of the Rain, were dressed in finery and
thrown into the flood. The waters began subsiding
immediately. The two young people turned to stone; they may
be seen as two great pinnacles rising from the tableland.
[Frazer, pp. 287-288]

When the great flood came, God built a house. Everyone
tried to crowd into it; those who failed were drowned. The
house floated on the waters for twenty days, striking the
sky three times. When the waters receded, some of the
survivors were very hungry, and although God told them not
to eat anything, they started to cook tortillas inside the
house. God sent down an angel to tell them not to light any
fire, but the smoke was already drifting into the sky. God
sent the angel again with the same message, but the people
said they were hungry and continued cooking. After the
message was ignored a third time, God told the angel to
give those people a good kick. They became dogs and
buzzards and cleaned up the earth. [Horcasitas, p. 195]

God ordered a man to build a large house and to put
animals and food in it. When he had finished, it began to
rain and continued raining for six months. The house
floated on the flood, and all who had helped build it were
saved in it. When the flood started going down, the man
sent out a raven, but it stayed out to eat dead bodies. He
next sent out a dove, which returned to tell what the raven
was doing, and ravens have been cursed to eat carrion
since. God ordered that no fires be kindled, but one man
disobeyed and was turned into a dog. [Horcasitas, p. 196]

After the world was destroyed by a flood, a boy, very
hungry, got out of his canoe to heat a gorda. The
Eternal Father said it was not yet time for a fire to be
lit and sent Saint Bartholomew to investigate who was
making the smoke. Bartholomew reminded the boy of God's
orders, but the boy pleaded that he was hungry. Saint
Bartholomew reported back to Heaven, and the Eternal Father
said to kick the boy if he again didn't understand. Saint
Bartholomew did so, and the boy turned into a dog. [Horcasitas, pp. 195-196]

When the flood waters began to rise, a man named Tezpi
entered into a great vessel, taking with him his wife and
children and diverse seeds and animals. When the waters
abated, the man sent out a vulture, but the bird found
plenty of corpses to eat and didn't return. Other birds
also flew away and didn't return. Finally, he sent out a
hummingbird, which returned with a green bough in its beak.
[Gaster, p. 122]

On the 17th day of February, in the year 614, it rained
for fourteen days all over the world. The waters rose and
destroyed all living things. Yaitowi, a just and perfect
man who walked with Dios, was saved, along with thirteen
others and eleven women, on the hill of Parbus (today
called Maatale). A few other people, seven birds, seven
asses, and seven little dogs were saved on other mountains.
After the flood, two angels appeared to two of the
survivors, and the angel San Gabriel came, sent by Dios,
telling the people to "go by the way of our Dios and
Father." When they arrived at Venedici, they heard the
voice of Dios, who promised the rainbow as a sign that no
other flood would destroy earth. [Giddings, pp. 106-108]

People were once fighting among themselves, and Father
God (Tata Dios) sent much rain, drowning everyone.
After the flood, God sent three men and three women to
repopulate the earth. They planted three kinds of corn
which still grow in the country. [Gaster, p. 124]

When all the world was flooded, a little boy and girl
climbed the mountain Lavachi ("Gourd") south of Panalachic.
They came down when the flood subsided, bringing with them
three grains of corn and three beans. The rocks were so
soft that their feet sank into them, leaving footprints
that can still be seen today. They planted the corn, slept
and dreamed, and harvested. All Tarahumares are descended
from them. [Frazer, p. 281]

A man clearing fields found the trees regrown overnight.
On the fifth day of this, he found that the Grandmother
Nakawe, goddess of the earth, did this, because she wanted
to talk to him. She told him that he was working in vain
because a flood was coming in five days. Per her
instructions, he built a box from the fig tree and entered
it with five grains of corn and beans of each color, fire
with five squash stems to feed it, and a black bitch. (In
other versions, the vessel was a canoe.) She closed him in
and caulked the cracks, and he floated in the flood for
five years, first floating south, then north, then west,
then east, then rising upward as the whole world flooded.
Finally the box came to rest on a mountain near Santa
Cantarina, where it can still be seen. The world was still
under water, but parrots and macaws pulled up mountains and
created valleys to drain the water, and the land dried. The
old woman, who had sat upon the box with a macaw during the
flood, turned to wind and disappeared. The man lived with
the bitch in a cave. Every evening he would return home
from work in the fields to find meals prepared. He spied
one day and found that the bitch took off her skin and
became a woman to do the work. He threw her skin into the
fire. She whined like a dog, but he bathed her in nixtamal
water, and she remained a woman. They repopulated the
earth. [Gaster, pp. 122-123; Horcasitas, pp. 203-205]

As in the Huichol myth, a woodman was warned of a coming
flood by a woman. He was bidden to take the woodpecker,
sandpiper, and parrot with him, as well as the bitch. He
embarked at midnight as the flood began. When the flood
subsided, he waited five days and sent out the sandpiper,
which came back and cried, "Ee-wee-wee", indicating the
earth was too wet to walk upon. He waited five more days
and sent out the woodpecker, which found the trees too soft
and returned saying "Chu-ee, chu-ee!" He waited five days
more and sent out the sandpiper, who reported back that the
ground was hard, and the man ventured out. He lived with
the bitch who, as above, transformed into a human wife. [Gaster, p. 124]

Survivors of the flood escaped in a canoe. God sent the
vulture out to see if the earth was dry enough, but the
vulture didn't return because it was devouring the drowned
corpses. God cursed the vulture and made it black, leaving
its wingtips white to remind people of its former color.
Next, God sent the ringdove, who reported that the land was
dry but the rivers were in spate. So God commanded the
animals to drink the rivers dry. All came and drank except
the weeping dove, which today still goes to drink at
nightfall because she is ashamed to be seen drinking by
day. [Gaster, p. 124]

A man cleared trees every morning and found them regrown
overnight. He spied and found an old man had been doing
this. The old man told him not to work anymore because a
flood was coming, and instead to build an ark and take on
it pairs of all animals, corn, and water. The flood came,
and the ark wandered over the waters for forty days. When
the waters went down, the man returned to work. He soon
noticed that food had been prepared for him when he
returned from work. He spied and found his black bitch had
been turning into the housekeeper. He burned her skin and
soothed her by sprinkling nixtamal water on her.
They lived together and had 24 children. One day the man
took half of them to visit God, who gave them clothes; the
others remained naked. That's why there are rich and poor
people. [Horcasitas, p. 205]

A man was surprised to find his fields overgrown after
clearing them the previous day. He spied and found a monkey
was responsible. The monkey told him that God didn't want
him to work because a flood was coming, and it gave him
instructions for building a coffinlike craft. The man built
the box and got into it, and when the flood came, the
monkey rode atop it. When the flood subsided, the man got
out and built a fire to cook some fish he found. But the
Almighty, irritated with him for building the fire,
appeared and turned him into a monkey. [Horcasitas, p. 198]

One of the Tezcatlipocas (sons of the original
dual god) transformed himself into the Sun and created the
first humans to show up his brothers. The other gods, angry
at his audacity, had Quetzalcoatl destroy the sun and the
earth, which he did with a flood. The people became fish.
This ended the first age. The second, third, and fourth
Suns ended, respectively, with the crumbling of the
heavens, a rain of fire, and devastating winds. [Leon-Portilla, p. 450]

People in three previous ages were destroyed by being
devoured by jaguars, swept away by the wind and turned into
monkeys, and transformed into birds in a rain of fire. The
sun of 4 Water lasted 676 years; then the heavens came down
in one day, and the people were inundated and transformed
into fish. In the next age, Titlacahuan (Tezcatlipoca) told
a man known as Nata ("Our Father") and his consort Nene to
hollow out an aheuhuetl (cypress?) log and enter it during
the vigil of Toçoztli, when the heavens would come
crashing down. He sealed them in with a single ear of corn
apiece to eat. When they had finished eating all the
kernels, they heard the water declining. They exited the
log, found a fish, and made a fire to cook it. The gods
Citlallinicue and Citlallatonac complained that someone was
smoking up the heavens. Tezcatlipoca descended, struck off
the people's heads, and reattached them over their
buttocks; they became dogs. [Markman, pp. 132-133; Frazer, pp. 274-275]

The deluge overwhelmed mankind. Only a man named Coxcox
(some call him Teocipactli) and a woman named Xochiquetzal
survived in a small bark. They landed on a mountain called
Colhuacan and had many children. These children were all
born dumb until a dove from a lofty tree gave them
languages, but different languages so that they couldn't
understand each other. [Gaster, p.
121; Horcasitas, p. 191; Vitaliano, p. 176]

A buzzard told a man working in the fields not to work
anymore and caused all the trees that had been cut to rise
again. The buzzard told the man to make a box for himself
and take along in it a dog and a chicken. The man survived
the flood in this box. When the waters lowered, the chicken
turned into a buzzard, and the man lived with the dog. The
man found that someone prepared tortillas for him while he
was away at work. One day he returned home and saw the
bitch remove her skin and grind corn. He then burned her
skin. She complained, but she remained a woman, and the two
of them repopulated the world. [Horcasitas, p. 206]

The earth was once well populated, when mankind
committed a magical fault for which they were punished by a
great deluge. The Mixtec people descended from the few
survivors. [Horcasitas, p.
192]

The god and goddess Puma-Snake and Jaguar-Snake raised a
cliff above the abyss. Here they lived many centuries and
raised two boys who had the power to transform themselves
into eagles and serpents. The brothers established farming
and sacrifice and penance; at their prayers, light appeared
and water separated from earth. The earth was peopled, but
a flood destroyed them, and Creator-of-All-Things restored
the world. [Alexander, 1920,
p. 87]

The Angel Gabriel warned Noéh that a flood was
coming because of mankind's sins. Noéh warned other
people, but they didn't believe him. He built an ark and
took pairs of all animals. The waters came; the Archangel
Saint Michael blew his trumpet. When the waters receded,
Noéh sent out a buzzard to see if the world was dry,
but it stayed out to eat dead animals. The crow was then
sent; it returned to say that the world was drying. Then
the turtledove and parroquet went and reported back that
the world was dry, and Noéh and the animals left the
ark. The buzzard became ugly because of his actions, and
the trip of a person unmindful of his mission is called a
"buzzard's trip." Petela, a great Zapotec chieftain of
Ocelotepeque, was descended from the survivors of the
flood. [Horcasitas, p.
192,213]

In another version, the buzzard stayed to eat the dead
and was condemned to be a scavenger. A heron was sent next,
fulfilled its mission, and was allowed to eat fish as a
reward. A raven was sent, and its obedience was rewarded by
permitting it to eat fruit and corn. A dove then went and
reported that the earth was almost dry, and it was granted
freedom. [Horcasitas, p. 212]

The earth was dark and cold. The only inhabitants were
giants, and God was angry with them for their idolatry.
Some giants, feeling that a flood was coming, carved
underground houses for themselves out of great slabs of
rock. Some thus escaped destruction and may still be found
hidden in certain caverns. Other giants hid in the forests
and became monkeys. [Horcasitas,
p. 199]

Nexquiriac sent down a great flood to punish mankind for
its very wicked ways. He instructed one good man to make a
large box and to preserve himself in it, along with many
animals and seeds of certain plants. When the flood was
almost over, Nexquiriac told the man not to come out, but
to bury the box, along with himself, until the face of the
earth had been burned. After that was done, the man emerged
and repopulated the earth. [Horcasitas, p. 192]

A man, warned by God, survived the flood in a tree he
had hollowed out. After the deluge, he was hungry and built
a fire. God smelled the smoke and sent buzzard down to
investigate, but buzzard stayed to eat the dead animals,
and God condemned him to eat only rotten flesh thereafter.
God told Saint Michael the Archangel to go down, and Saint
Michael reversed the man's face and hind parts and turned
him into a monkey. [Horcasitas,
p. 197]

A flood destroyed mankind. The children became flowers
when they jumped up to where the star is. A man was sent a
large dog. He went every day to clear the fields and found,
on returning home, that food had been prepared for him. He
resolved to discover the cook. [The story fragment ends
there, but see below, and see related myth of Huichol.] [Horcasitas, p. 205]

God told a man to make an ark. After the deluge had
subsided, the man sent forth a dove, which came back.
Later, he sent it out again; it returned with muddy feet,
and the man left the ark. He happened upon a house and
decided to live there. Ants brought him corn. When he
returned every day, he found food prepared for him. He
watched his dog and one day found her, skinless, preparing
corn. He threw her skin in the fire, and she began to weep.
The couple lived together and had a baby. One day, the man
told his wife to make tamales out of the "tender one," and
the wife, misunderstanding, cooked their child. When the
man found out, he scolded his wife and ate the tamales
anyway. [Horcasitas, pp.
205-206]

Through a misunderstanding, a wife killed and cooked her
child. She and her husband ate it and enjoyed it, and soon
everyone was killing and cooking children. God became angry
and sent a deluge. One intelligent man survived in a canoe.
Right after the flood, he lit a fire, and God smelled the
smoke. God sent the buzzard, turkey buzzard, and churn-owl
to investigate, but they stayed to eat dead bodies. God
condemned them always to eat dead bodies. God then sent the
hawk, which reported back. The man was turned into a
monkey. [Horcasitas, p. 198]

The Padre Santo warned two brothers that a flood was
coming, and they, with many animals, survived in an ark.
When the waters were subsiding, the younger brother fell
out of the ark, landed in a tree, and turned into a monkey.
[Horcasitas, p. 198]

The wooden people, an early version of humanity, were
imperfect because there was nothing in their hearts and
minds, and they did not remember Heart of Sky. So Heart of
Sky destroyed them with a flood. He sent down a black rain
of resin; animals came into their houses and attacked them;
and even pots and stones crushed them. The dogs and turkeys
told them, "You caused us pain, you ate us. Now we eat
you." Their other animals and implements likewise turned on
them. They tried to escape onto their houses, into trees,
and into caves, but the houses collapsed, the trees threw
them off, and the caves slammed shut. Today's monkeys are a
sign of these people, mere manikins. This was before the
sun dawned on the earth. [Tedlock,
p. 83-86]

Some men tried to save themselves from the deluge by
making boxes and going underground in them. God didn't
approve of this and turned them into bees. [Horcasitas, p. 199]

The Puzob, an industrious dwarf people, were the first
inhabitants of the earth. God destroyed them with a flood
because of their carelessness in their observation of
custom. They heard that a terrible storm was coming, so
they put some stones in a pond and sat on them, but the
dwarfs were all destroyed. Jesucristo sent down four angels
to investigate what was happening on earth. They removed
their clothes and bathed, whereupon they became doves. Some
other angels were sent down; they were turned into buzzards
when they ate the dead. [Horcasitas, p. 194]

In the first period of the world lived the Saiyamkoob,
"the Adjusters," a dwarf race which built cities now in
ruins. They worked in darkness, as the sun had not yet
appeared. When it did, they turned to stone, and their
images can be found in the ruins. Food for the workers was
lowered by rope from the sky, but the rope was cut, the
blood ran out of it, and the earth and sky separated. This
period ended with water over the earth. The Tsolob, "the
Offenders," lived in the second period. These, too were
destroyed by a flood. The Maya reigned during the third
period, but their period was also ended by flood. The
fourth and present age is peopled by a mixture of all
previous races. [Alexander,
1920, p. 153]

After people were created, the sky fell upon the earth,
and the waters followed them. The world was destroyed. The
four Bacab gods managed to escape and now hold up the four
corners of the sky. [Horcasitas,
p. 191]

Two floods had destroyed humanity. Three people escaped
a third and final flood in a canoe. [Horcasitas, p. 191]

Christ ordered a man to build an ark and to take in it
pairs of all useful animals. The flood came and subsided.
The survivors began to cook fish, which the rest of the
former inhabitants of the world had been turned into.
Christ sent a buzzard to investigate, but the buzzard
stayed to eat fish. Then Christ sent down the hawk and
hummingbird and finally came himself. He turned the people
upside down, and they became monkeys. Christ repopulated
the world by turning the dead fish back into people. The
buzzard was condemned to eat only carrion thereafter. [Horcasitas, pp. 196-197]

God told a man to stop working, because a flood was
coming. The man was told to build a canoe to save himself
and his family. After the deluge came and went, the man
began to cook the bodies of the dead animals. Saint Peter
smelled the smoke and came to investigate. He turned the
man into a buzzard and his children into monkeys. [Horcasitas, p. 197]

The Master of Spirits, angered at the people for not
giving the offerings due him, caused a heavy rain to fall
for several days, drowning the people. Only a few survived,
escaping by canoe to an isolated mountain. This flood
separated the Carib's islands from the mainland and caused
their present terrain. [Frazer, p.
281]

Makunaima created the birds and animals and put his son,
Sigu, in charge of them. Makunaima created a great tree
from which all food plants grew. Agouti discovered it first
but kept it secret, but Sigu sent Rat to follow him, and
the secret was out. Sigu decided it would be best to chop
down the tree and plant the seeds and cuttings so that the
food would be widespread. This they did, but Iwarrika, the
monkey, didn't help, so Sigu sent him to fetch water with
an open-work basket. When the tree was felled, the animals
discovered the hollow stump was filled with water
containing all kinds of fresh-water fish. But the water
began overflowing and threatened to flood the land, so Sigu
wove a magic basket and covered the trunk with it. When
Iwarrika returned, he saw the basket and, thinking the best
fruits were under it, lifted it to look. A torrent of water
flooded out and covered the countryside. Sigu led the birds
and climbing animals to tall cocorite trees on the highest
hill. He led the other animals to a cave and covered its
entrance with wax, first giving them a long thorn with
which to pierce the wax to determine when the water went
down. Many days of darkness and storm followed. The red
howler monkey cried in anguish so much at the cold and
hunger that his throat swelled and remains so to this day.
Sigu stayed with the birds in the cocorite tree,
occasionally dropping seeds. He heard that it took longer
and longer for them to hit water as the water dropped, and
eventually they thudded on the ground. At that moment, the
sky grew lighter. The trumpeter bird was in such a hurry to
descend that he flopped into an ant's nest, and the insects
gnawed his legs to the bone, giving his present appearance.
Sigu rubbed two pieces of wood together to make fire, but
the bush-turkey mistook the first spark for a firefly,
gobbled it up, and burnt his throat, explaining why turkeys
have red wattles today. The alligator was generally
unpopular and was accused of having stolen the spark. To
try to retrieve the spark, Sigu tore out the animal's
tongue, so alligators today have no tongue to speak of. The
plants which had been planted sprang to life, but the fish
were not distributed evenly. Monkeys are as curious as ever
but are now afraid of water. [Frazer,
pp. 253-265; Gifford, pp.
113-114]

Shortly after people arrived on earth, all crops grew on
a single tree. The culture hero Makunaima and his four
brothers cut down the tree, and water immediately poured
from the stump, and with it came fish. One of the brothers
made a basket to stop the water, but Makunaima wanted a few
more fish for the rivers. When he lifted the basket just a
little, water came out full force, flooding the earth. Some
people survived in canoes or by climbing tall palms until
the water subsided. (In some versions of this myth, the
water from the stump merely forms rivers.) [Bierhorst, 1988, pp. 79-80]

The Star people listened to Jaguar and killed and ate a
woman. Kuamachi wanted to punish them, but they were too
many and too powerful. He went to Wlaha, their chief, and
invited them to help in picking dewaka fruit. They
were suspicious, but Kuamachi left some fruit with them,
and they liked the taste so much they decided to go help
pick fruit. Kuamachi and his grandfather Mahanama led them
to the trees. The star people climbed the trees and started
eating fruit; they weren't afraid of only two people.
Kuamachi dropped one fruit; water came out of it, spread,
and caused a flood, covering everything but the trees.
Kuamachi thought "canoe," and a canoe appeared. He and
Mahanama stayed in the canoe. Mahanama threw the baskets he
was weaving into the water, and they turned into anacondas,
crocodiles, caimans, and other deadly animals. Kuamachi set
a termite nest on fire, filling the forest with smoke. He
and his grandfather got bows and arrows they had hidden in
a cave. When they got back and the smoke cleared, the Star
people were begging for mercy. The two shot them. The
people fell down into the water below and were attacked by
the dangerous animals. Kuamachi and his grandfather ran out
of arrows before shooting Wlaha, the leader of the Star
people. He had turned himself into seven people and caught
seven arrows. The surviving wounded Star people climbed
back into the trees. Wlaha shot the arrows into heaven, and
with the help of Ahishama, who changed into the troupial,
and Kütto, who became a frog, he formed a ladder which
he and the surviving Star people climbed up and became
stars. Ahishama became Mars; Wlaha became the Pleiades;
Mönettä, the scorpion, became the Big Dipper; and
Ihette, One Leg, became Orion's belt. Kuamachi also decided
to climb up. He had Kahshe, the piranha, cut the vine
behind him so that the demon Ioroko couldn't climb up with
his basket of poison. Kuamachi brought Akuaniye, the Peace
Plant, with him, which he offered to Wlaha, and they
stopped fighting. Kuamachi became the Evening Star. Before
this, the night sky had been empty and black. [de Civrieux, pp. 109-116]

The good spirit Makunaima ("He who works in the night")
created the heaven and earth. When he had created plants
and trees, he came down from his heavenly mansion, climbed
a tree, and chipped off bark with a large stone axe. The
chips turned into animals of all kinds when they fell into
the river at the base of the tree. Next, Makunaima created
man, and after the man had fallen asleep, he awoke to find
a woman beside him. Later the evil spirit got more power on
earth, so Makunaima sent a great flood. Only one man
survived in a canoe. He sent a rat to see whether the flood
had abated, and the rat returned with a cob of maize. When
the flood had subsided, the man threw stones behind him,
which became other people. [Frazer,
pp. 255-256]

In olden times before the moon existed, the Muyscas
lived as savages. A bearded old man with the names
Botschika, Nemquetheba, and Zuhe came and taught them
agriculture, crafts, religion, and government. His wife,
with the names Huythaca, Chia, and Yubecayguya, was
beautiful but malicious. To destroy the good works of her
husband, she magically caused the river Funza (Rio Bogota)
to flood the whole Cundinamarca plateau. Only a few people
escaped to the mountain tops. Botschika banished her from
earth and changed her into the moon. Then he opened a pass,
and the water poured down in the Tequendama waterfall,
leaving Lake Guatavita. The country dried and was
cultivated by the survivors. [Kelsen,
p. 140; Vitaliano, pp.
173-175]

Offended by people's wickedness, Chibchachun, the
tutelary god, sent the torrents of Sopo and Tibito down
from the hills, flooding the plain. This made cultivation
impossible and threatened to submerge the people, who had
fled to the mountains. The people appealed to the
culture-hero Bocicha. Appearing as a rainbow, he struck the
mountain with his staff and provided an outlet for the
waters, creating the waterfall of Tequendama. Chibchachun
was driven under the ground and made to hold it up
(replacing the lignum-vitae trees which had held it
before). His restlessness causes earthquakes. The rainbow,
Chuchaviva, was thence honored as a god, but Chibchachum,
in revenge, proclaimed that many would die when it appears.
[Alexander, 1920, p. 203; Gaster, p. 131; Frazer, p. 267]

The first people neglected Kuma the creator, so she made
it rain until only one sand dune and one tree stayed above
water. People escaped into the tree, but there were only
leaves and rotten fruit to eat, and when people sat with
their bottoms towards the water, a big fish would come by
and bite them. A few of these people survived as humans,
but Kuma turned the ones that ate leaves and rotten fruit
into howler monkeys. [Brusca &
Wilson, p. "M"]

The daughter of Rahaririyoma went to a river to fetch
water. Omauwä (one of the first beings) and his
brother Yoawä found her and copulated with her; then
Omauwä changed the girl's vagina into a mouth with
teeth. Howashiriwä, another of the first beings, then
saw her and seduced her, but her vagina bit off his penis.
Then the son of Omauwä became very thirsty.
Omauwä and Yoawä dug a hole for water, but they
dug so deep that water gushed forth and covered the jungle.
Many drowned. Some of the first beings survived by cutting
down trees and floating on them. This was such a strange
thing to do that they became foreigners and floated away,
and their language gradually became unintelligible. The
Yanomamö survived by climbing mountains, namely Maiyo,
Howashiwä, and Homahewä. Raharariyoma painted red
dots all over her body and plunged into the lake, causing
it to recede. Omauwä then caused her to be changed
into a rahara, a dangerous snake-like monster that
lives in large rivers. Omauwä went downstream and
became an enemy of the Yanomamö, sending them hiccups
and sickness. [Chagnon, pp.
46-47]

In the time of the great flood, "the Age of Water," the
sea broke against the Encamarada mountain chain, and people
were forced into canoes. One man and one woman were saved
on the high mountain called Tamanacu, on the banks of the
Asiveru. After the flood, as they descended the mountain
grieving the destruction of mankind, they heard a voice
telling them to throw the fruits of the Mauritia palm over
their heads behind them. People sprung from the kernels of
these fruits, men from those thrown by the man, and women
from those thrown by the woman. (This tradition occurs also
in neighboring tribes.) [Gaster, p.
127; H. Miller, p. 285]

Since its creation, the world has been destroyed twice,
once by fire and once by flood, by the great god Aiomun
Kondi because of the wickedness of mankind. The pious and
wise chief Marerewana was informed of the coming of the
flood and saved himself and his family in a large canoe. He
tied the canoe to a tree with a long cable of bushrope to
prevent drifting too far from his old home. [Gaster, p. 126]

Once upon a time, people heard a rumbling above and
below the ground; the sun and moon turned red, blue, and
yellow; and wild beasts mingled fearlessly with man. A
month later, they saw darkness ascending from the earth to
the sky, accompanied by a roar and by thunder and heavy
rain. Everything was in dreadful confusion. Some people
lost themselves. Some died without knowing why. The water
rose to cover the earth, and people took refuge in the
highest trees. There they perished from cold and hunger,
for it continued to be dark and rainy. Only Uassu and his
wife survived. When they came down after the flood, they
could not find even a sign of a single corpse. They had
many children. Today, the Pamarys build their houses on the
river, so that when the water rises, they may rise with it.
[Gaster, pp. 125-126]

Birds flew all over the world collecting things that
decayed and threw them in a great kettle of water that
boiled in sun. (The hard parukuba wood they left
alone.) The storks waited around the kettle and snatched up
things when they appeared on the surface of the boiling
water. When the water was getting low, Mayuruberu, the
chief of storks and creator of all birds, threw a round
stone in the kettle. This upset the kettle, and its hot
liquid poured over the world and burned up almost
everything, including even water. Mankind survived, but all
plants were destroyed except the cassia. The sloth, an
ancestor of the Ipurina, climbed the cassia tree to fetch
fruits, as there was nothing else to eat. At that time, the
sun and moon were hidden. The first kernel that the sloth
threw down fell on hard ground, and the sun appeared again,
but it was very small. The second kernel he threw fell in
water, and the sun grew larger. As the third kernel fell in
deeper water, the sun grew more, and so on until the sun
reached its present size. Then the sloth asked Mayuruberu
for seeds of crops. Mayuruberu appeared with many new
plants, and the Ipurina began tilling their fields.
Mayuruberu ate anyone who would not work. The kettle still
stands in the sun, but it is empty. [Frazer, pp. 259-260; Kelsen, p. 139]

Two boys found that the game they had hunted for a feast
kept disappearing while they were gone. One stayed in camp
and discovered a large snake was responsible. They built a
fire to drive the snake out of the hollow in a tree, where
it lived. The snake fell in the fire, and one of the
brothers ate some of its roasted flesh. He became very
thirsty, drank all the water in camp, and went to the lake.
He was transformed first into a frog, then a lizard, and
finally into a snake, which grew rapidly. His brother was
frightened and tried to pull him out, but the lake began to
overflow. The snake told his brother that the lake would
continue to grow and all the people would perish unless
they made their escape. The snake told him to take a
calabash and flee to a palm tree on the highest mountain.
The brother told his people what was happening, but they
didn't believe him. He fled to the top of a palm tree on
the top of a mountain and returned many days later when the
waters had subsided. Vultures were eating the dead people
in the valley. He went to the lake and carried away his
brother in a calabash. [Kelsen, pp.
140-141; see also Roheim, p. 156]

A great cloud fell from heaven, turned to rain, and
killed all the inhabitants of earth. Only a man and his two
sons were saved. One of the sons was cursed by his father;
the Jivaros are descended from him. [Gaster, p. 126]

According to some Jivaro, the flood was survived by a
man and woman, who took refuge in a cave on a high mountain
along with samples of all the various animal species. [Gaster, p. 126]

Two brothers survived the flood in a mountain which rose
higher and higher with the flood waters. They went looking
for food after the flood, and when they returned, found
food set out for them. To find its source, one of the
brothers hid himself and saw two parrots with the faces of
women enter their hut and prepare the food. He jumped out,
seized one of the birds, and married it. From this union
came three boys and three girls from whom the Jivaros are
descended. [Gaster, p. 126]

A hunter heard whistling at a riverbank, and suspecting
it was something from the spirit world, went home and used
tobacco smoke to induce a dream. In it, he was told by the
daughter of the water spirit Tsunki to return to the river.
He did so, met the woman, and followed her underwater to
her father's house. The woman's mother gave him an
aphrodisiac, and he became her husband. When he returned to
his home on earth, she took the form of a snake. She became
pregnant, and the man had to go out hunting. While he was
out, his two earthly wives discovered the snake and
tormented her, and she returned to her father. Tsunki, in a
rage, flooded the earth, drowning everyone but the hunter
and one of his daughters, who escaped to a mountaintop.
These two repopulated the world. [Bierhorst, 1988, p. 218]

A Murato was fishing in a lagoon of the Pastaza River
when a small crocodile swallowed his bait. The fisherman
killed it. The mother of crocodiles was angered and lashed
the water with her tail, which flooded the area and drowned
all people except one man, who climbed a palm tree. It was
dark as night, so he dropped a palm fruit from time to
time. When he heard it thud on ground rather than splash,
he knew the flood had subsided. He climbed down, built a
house, and began tilling a field. Being alone, he cut off a
piece of his flesh and planted it; from this grew a woman,
whom he married. [Frazer, pp.
261-262]

Two brother escaped a great flood on top of the tall
mountain Huaca-yñan. As the water rose, the mountain
also rose. When the water lowered and their provisions were
consumed, the brother descended, built a small house, and
ate herbs and roots, living a miserable existence of hunger
and toil. One day, they returned home to find food and
chicha drink prepared. After ten days of this, to
find out who their benefactor was, the elder brother hid
and presently saw two macaws, dressed like Cañaris,
enter the house and begin to prepare food they had brought
with them. The man saw that they were beautiful and had
faces of women, and he came out of hiding. But the birds
became angry and left when they saw him, leaving no food.
The younger brother came home and heard the story, and both
were angry. The next day, the younger brother decided to
hide. After three days, the macaws returned. The two men
waited until the birds had finished cooking and then shut
the door. The birds were angry, and the larger one escaped
as the brothers held the small one. The brothers took the
macaw as a wife; by her they had six sons and daughters,
from whom the Cañari are descended. Macaws and the
hill Huaca-yñan are venerated by the Indians today.
[Frazer, pp. 268-269]

Long ago, before there were any Incas, the country was
populous, but the ocean broke out of its bounds, the land
was covered, and the people perished. Some say that a few
people survived in the caves of the highest mountains.
Others say that only six people survived on a float. [Frazer, pp. 271-272]

A month before the flood came, the sheep showed much
sadness, watching the stars at night and not eating. Their
shepherd asked what bothered them, and they told him that
the conjunction of stars foretold the destruction of the
world by water. The shepherd and his six children gathered
all the food and sheep they could and took them to the top
of the very tall mountain Ancasmarca. As the flood water
rose, the mountain rose higher, so its top was never
submerged, and the mountain later sank with the water. The
six children repopulated the province after the flood. [Frazer, pp. 270-271]

Quilla, the moon, had sex with his bird sister, Jilucu.
From this union came the stars, as people. Quilla always
came unseen at night. One night Jilucu smeared genipa juice
on his face, telling him it would make him feel fresh. By
morning the juice turned dark, and Jilucu saw that her
lover was the moon. The stars also knew from the moon's
spotted face that they were descended from an incestuous
relationship. They all cried, and their crying produced
rain, earthquake, and flood. Volcanoes erupted, new hills
formed, rivers swelled; the earth people were swept
eastward by a great river into the sea. From this river
came the sun, who began his regular course and brought an
orderly axis to the world. The moon and stars lost much of
their power because of the incestuous relationship, making
night lose most of its light. The people were separated
from one another and had to work their way westward, having
many adventures along the way. [Whitten, pp. 51-52]

The world wanted to come to an end. A llama buck,
knowing that the ocean would soon overflow, was depressed.
When its human owner complained that it wouldn't eat, the
llama told him that the flood would occur in five days and
suggested they go to Villca Coto mountain with five days'
food. The man left in a hurry, carrying both the llama and
the supplies. They arrived at the mountain to find the peak
already filled with all kinds of animals. The flood came as
soon as they arrived and lasted five days, then it dried to
the ocean's normal position. The fox's tail was soaked,
which turned it black. Afterwards, the man began to
multiply once more. [Salomon &
Urioste, pp. 51-52]

Paria Caca, a god born from five falcon eggs, heard
about a man called Tamta Namca who called himself a god and
had himself worshipped, and about other people's sins. He
went into a rage, rose up as rain, and washed them all away
to the ocean, together with their homes and llamas. At that
time a tree called the Pullao formed an arch between the
Llantapa and Vichoca mountains; in it lived monkeys,
toucans, and other birds. These too were swept to sea. [Salomon & Urioste, pp. 59-60]

Paria Caca went to the village Huauqui Usa, which was
celebrating a festival. He sat at the end of the banquet
like a stranger. No one offered him a drink while he sat
there, until at the end of the day a woman finally did so.
Paria Caca told the woman that these people had made him
mad, told her that in five days something terrible would
happen to the village, and warned her to take her family
away and not to tell anyone else, or he might kill her,
too. Five days later, the woman and her family left. The
other villagers continued drinking without a care. Paria
Caca climbed Matao Coto, a mountain which overlooks the
village, and rising up as red and yellow hail, caused a
torrential rainstorm. It washed all the villagers to the
ocean and shaped the slopes and valleys of the area. [Salomon & Urioste, pp. 61-62] He
similarly exterminated another village where no one offered
him a drink. [Salomon & Urioste,
p. 127]

The Inca summoned people from every village to help
defeat their enemies. Paria Caca sent his child Maca Uisa.
When nobody else at the meeting offered to help, Maca Uisa
said he would defeat the enemies completely. Strong litter
bearers carried him to the battle front, and as soon as he
got there, he started raining on them, gently at first,
then pouring rain. He washed away their villages in a
mudslide and killed their strong men with lightning bolts.
Only a few common people were spared. [Salomon & Urioste, p. 115]

Pictorial records of ancient Incan rulers show that a
flood rose above the highest mountains. All created things
perished, except for a man and woman who floated in a box.
When the flood subsided, the floating box was driven by the
wind to Tiahuanacu, about 200 miles from Cuzco, where the
Creator told them to dwell. The Creator molded new people
from clay at Tiahuanacu. On each figure, the Creator
painted dress and hair style, and he gave each nation
distinctive language, songs, and seeds to plant. When he
had brought them to life, he ordered them into the earth to
travel underground and emerge from caves, springs, tree
trunks, etc. in their various homes. He then created the
sun, moon, and stars. [Bierhorst, 1988, pp. 200,202; Gaster, p. 127; Frazer, p. 271]

The creator god Viracocha made the earth and sky, and he
created stone giants to live in it. After a while the
giants became lazy and quarrelsome, and Viracocha decided
to destroy them. Some he turned back to stone, and these
stone statues still exist at Tiahuanaco and Pucara. He
destroyed the rest with a great flood. When the flood
subsided, it left the lakes Titicaca and Poopo, and it left
seashells on the Altiplano at elevations of 3660 m.
Viracocha saved two stone giants from the flood and with
their help created people his own size. He reached down
into Lake Titicaca and drew out the Sun and Moon to provide
light so he could admire his new creation. In those days,
the Moon was even brighter than the Sun, but the Sun grew
jealous and threw ashes onto the Moon's face. [Gifford, p. 54]

A large, rich city once existed on the Altiplano. One
day, a group of ragged Indians came and warned the proud
inhabitants that the city would be destroyed by earthquake,
flood, and fire. Most inhabitants just scoffed and
eventually had the ragged people flogged and thrown out.
Some of the city's priests, though, heeded the warning and
went to live as hermits in a temple on a hill. Some time
later, a red cloud appeared on the horizon. Soon it had
grown and covered the area, and its red glow eerily lit the
night. Suddenly, with a flash and a rumble, an earthquake
destroyed many of the city's buildings, and a red rain
poured down. Other earthquakes and more rain followed, and
a flood soon covered the ruined city; this water is Lake
Titicaca today. None of the city's inhabitants survived
save the priests. The descendants of the prophets became
the Callawayas, wise men of the valleys. [Gifford, pp. 55-56]

Some adventurous Indians, looking for a reputed land of
abundance, travelled to the Amazonian jungle. To make a
clearing, they set the forest alight. The gods of the
mountains were angry at the smoke dirtying their snow.
Khuno, the snow god, decided to kill them with a flood, but
the mountain god Illimani suggested instead that they be
driven to great hardship. Khuno sent a flood that spared
their lives but destroyed everything they had managed to
build and grow. The people were almost hopeless, but one
was attracted to a brilliant green plant, coca. He chewed
its leaves and forgot his discomforts, and the others
followed his example. When they all felt strong again, they
returned to Tiahuanaco, taking coca with them. [Gifford, p. 76]

The evil supernatural being Aguara-Tunpa declared war
against the god Tunpaete, Creator of the Chiriguanos. He
set fire to the prairies in autumn, destroying all the
plants and land animals. The people, who had not then begun
farming, nearly died of hunger, but they retreated to the
banks of rivers and survived on fish. Seeing people still
surviving, Aguara-Tunpa caused a torrential rain. Acting on
a hint given them by Tunpaete, the Chiriguanos placed two
sibling babies, a boy and a girl, on a large mate leaf and
set it afloat on the water. The flood rose, covering the
earth and killing the rest of the Chiriguanos, but the two
babies survived and eventually landed on solid ground when
the flood sank. There, they found fish to eat, but they had
no way to cook it. Fortunately, before the flood, a frog
had taken some hot coals in his mouth, and it kept them
alight during the flood by blowing on them. He gave the
fire to the children, and they were able to roast their
fish. In time, they grew up, and the Chiriguanos are
descended from them. [Gaster, pp.
127-128]

The bottle tree (Chorisia insignis) once
contained all the water and all the fish. The tree had a
locked door. Fox stole the key and thoughtlessly opened the
door wide. The waters rushed out, flooding the world and
bringing all kinds of fish. Fox drowned. [Bierhorst, 1988, p. 123]

In a former time when there were a great many people,
the earth sank. Then water began to seep out. It kept
rising until it became a flood. Some boys were saved,
plucked from the water by a white bird; all other people
drowned. [Bierhorst, 1988, p.
142]

Two twin sons of a great wizard, one good and the other
evil, were always arguing. One day the angered good brother
stamped so hard that the earth opened and water gushed out,
shooting as high as the clouds. The water covered the whole
world. The good brother and his wife climbed a
pindona tree, and the evil brother and his wife
climbed a geniper tree until the waters receded. (In
another account, they survived in canoes.) From these
couples descended the Tupinambas and Tominus, two tribes
which don't get along well. [Vitaliano, p. 175; Gaster, pp. 124-125]

A medicine man named Sommay had two sons, Tamendonare
and Ariconte. Tamendonare tilled the ground and was a good
husband and father. Ariconte was interested only in war.
One day he returned from battle with the arm of a slain foe
and accused his brother of cowardice. Tamendonare
sarcastically asked why he didn't bring the whole carcass.
Ariconte threw the arm at his brother's door, and at that
moment, their village was transported to the sky, leaving
the two brothers on earth. Tamendonare stamped on the
ground so hard that a fountain of water sprang forth into
the sky; the water continued until the whole world was
covered. The brothers fled to the highest mountains and
climbed trees. Tamendonare climbed a pindona tree,
helping one of his wives up with him, and Ariconte climbed
a geniper tree with his wife. All other people
drowned. Ariconte's wife dropped fruit and heard from the
splash when the water was still too high for them to climb
down. Two different peoples, who are perpetually feuding,
are descended from these two couples. The Tupinambo exalt
themselves over the Tominu by claiming descent from
Tamendonare. [Frazer, pp.
254-255]

The great god Tupi warned a medicine man named
Tamanduare of a coming great flood that would cover the
earth, and he told Tamanduare to seek refuge on a lofty
peak with a palm tree at its top. Tamanduare and his family
went there immediately, and when they arrived, it began to
rain. It continued to rain until the whole earth was
flooded. The water covered even the summit of the mountain,
and Tamanduare and his family climbed into the palm tree
and live there, eating its fruit, until the water subsided.
Then they descended and repopulated the devastated world.
[Frazer, pp. 255-256]

The Carayas, hunting pigs, drove them into their dens
and began pulling them out and killing them. In doing so,
they also came upon a deer, a tapir, a white deer, and
finally the feet of a man. They fetched a magician, who
drew the man from the earth. This man was Anatiua; he had a
thin body but fat paunch. He sang that he wanted tobacco,
but the Carayas didn't understand him and offered him all
kinds of flowers and fruits until Anatiua pointed at a man
smoking. Then they gave him tobacco. He smoked it until he
fell senseless. They took him back to their village, where
he awoke and began to dance and sing. But his behavior and
unintelligible speech so alarmed the Carayas that they
packed up and left. This angered Anatiua, and he turned
himself into a giant piranha and followed them, carrying
many calabashes full of water. The Carayas didn't heed his
calls to stop, so he smashed his calabashes one at a time,
making the water rise until only the mountains at the mouth
of the Tapirape River were exposed. The Carayas took refuge
on the two peaks of those mountains. Anatiua called on the
fish to drag the people into the water. The jahu,
pintado, and pacu failed, but the
bicudo managed to scale the mountain from behind and
pull the people from the summit; a lagoon still marks where
they fell. Only a few people survived, who descended when
the flood had gone. [Frazer, pp.
257-258]

A flood once covered the whole earth except for the top
of the coastal range Serra do Mar. Members of the three
tribes Coroados, Cayurucres, and Cames, swam for the
mountains holding lighted torches between their teeth. The
Cayurucres and Cames wearied and drowned, and their souls
went to dwell in the heart of the mountain. The Coroados
made it and stayed there, some on the ground and some in
the branches of trees. Several days passed without food and
without the water lowering. Then some saracuras, a
species of waterfowl, flew to them with baskets of earth.
The birds began throwing the earth into the water, and the
water sank. The people urged the birds to hurry, so the
birds called the ducks to help them. When the flood
subsided, the Coroados descended, except for the ones which
had climbed into trees, who became monkeys. The souls of
the Cayurucres and Cames burrowed their way out of the
mountain and kindled a fire. From the ashes of the fire,
one of the Cayurucres molded jaguars, tapirs, ant-bears,
bees, and many other animals; he made them live and told
them what they should eat. But one of the Cames similarly
made pumas, poisonous snakes, and wasps to fight the other
animals. [Gaster, p. 125]

Two great serpents made the sea rise to determine which
of them had the more powerful magic. The flood came after a
strong earthquake and volcanic eruption. The people took
refuge on a mountain called Thegtheg ("thundering" or
"sparkling") which floated close to the sun. Afterwards,
whenever the Araucanians felt an earthquake, they would
flee to the hills carrying bowls to protect their heads
from the sun's heat. [Vitaliano,
p. 173; Frazer, p. 262]

Rainbow does not like menstruating women to enter the
water, or even to drink from it. One day a young woman
broke this taboo because her mother and sisters didn't
leave her any drinking water when they left for the day.
Driven by thirst, she went to the lagoon. When she had
returned, Rainbow, full of anger, caused a strong wind,
accompanied by whirlwinds and heavy rain. All were drowned
in the ensuing flood. [Bierhorst, 1988, pp. 142-143]

At one time, people didn't die; instead, they just slept
awhile and woke up refreshed. After many lives, some got
tired of being human and turned into rocks, clouds,
animals, and such. A flood came which covered the world.
People floundered around in the cold water. Some climbed
onto ice floes and joined the penguins, playing and eating
fish as the penguins did. In time, they turned into large
penguins. When the water went down, some people went back
to living as humans, but others stayed emperor penguins.
[Brusca & Wilson, p. "E"]

Léxuwakipa, the rusty brown spectacled ibis, felt
offended by the people, so she let it snow so much that ice
came to cover the entire earth. This happened at the time
of Yáiaasága, when men seized power from the
women. When the ice melted, it rapidly flooded all the
earth. People hurried to their canoes, but many didn't make
it, and more perished when they couldn't find sheltered
places. Some people reached the five mountaintops which
stayed above the flood. These mountains were Usláka,
Wémarwaia, Auwáratuléra,
Welalánux, and Piatuléra. The water stayed at
its high mark for two days and then rapidly lowered. Signs
of the floodwaters still show up on those mountains. The
few families which survived rebuilt their huts on the
shore. Men have ruled women since then. [Wilbert, pp. 27-28]

The moon-woman Hánuxa caused the flood because
she was full of hatred against the people, especially the
men, who had taken over the women's secret kina
ceremony and made it their own. A few people survived on
five mountaintops. [Wilbert, p.
29]

The sun sank into the sea, causing its waters to rise
tumultuously and to cover all the earth except the summit
of a single mountain. A few people survived there. [Gaster, p. 128]